




.■lo. 




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MORNING OF JOY 5 



A. SEQUEL TO THE NIGHT OF WEEPING 



' §mj nrraity in tin ranrning." 

PSAL. XXX. 8k 



REV. HORATIUS BONAR, 

KJSL80. 



NEW YORK: 

ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, 

No. 285 BROADWAY. 

1854. 



,£-ss 






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CONTENTS 



MM 

PREFACE 7 

CHAPTER I. 

THE ANTICIPATIONS ....... 1 

CHAPTER II. 

THE NIGHT-WATCH ....... 11 

CHAPTER III. 

THE EARNESTS OF THE MORNING .... 32 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE USE OF THESE EARNESTS . , • .49 

CHAPTER V. 

THE MORNING-STAR .69 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE MORNING .75 

CHAPTER VII. 
THE VICTORY OVER DEATH 93 



tf CONTENTS. 

paos 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE KBTJNION . 108 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE PRESENCE OP THE LORD. . . . .128 

CHAPTER X. 

THE KINGDOM . . -. 150 

CHAPTER XL 

THE GRACE . . 171 

CHAPTER XII. 

TAB GLORY . . . . . • • 190 



PREFACE. 



I have been asked, once and again, to follow up 
"The Night of Weeping " with "The Morning of 
Joy," the words of David, in the 30th Psalm, hav- 
ing suggested the addition. After much thought 
and some hesitation I have done so. 

The former work was meant to be complete in 
itself, presenting not merely the night-side of tribu- 
lation, but bringing out also, though less promi- 
nently, some of its day-hues. As, however, it has 
been thought incomplete, having in it so much 
more of night than of day ; an endeavour has been 
made to complete it by drawing forward the eye to 
the scenes of morning, so soon to open upon us, in 
all their breadth and beauty. In this way we are 
led to forget the things that are behind, and to 
reach forward to those before, pressing towards the 
mark for the prize of our high calling. And the 
fuller, the truer, the more frequent our anticipations 
of promised glory are, the deeper and the richer 
will our consolations be. 

Sitting down beneath the shadow of the cross, and 
reading in its inscription God's record of free love, 
our fears are put to flight and our souls find rest. 
Possessed of forgiveness and assured of the life that 
dies not, we feel that all is well with vis. " Come 
life, come death," we can say, " come calm or storm, 
come gain or loss, come joy or grief, all is well." For 
"the work of righteousness is peace, and the effect 
of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever." 

And surely this is much in the way of con sola- 



n PREFACE. 

tion, even though we had nothing more to cheer us. 
But it is not all. There is much more than this. 

While sitting there God opens upon our eye a 
wide prospect, stretching far into eternity. Per- 
haps he sends trial, "breaking us with his tempest." 
Then he spreads out before us the vision of bright- 
ness for our comfort, and as the grief presses heavier, 
the vision enlarges on the view. The going down 
of our sun, though it covers earth with a shadow, 
draws the curtain from the firmament above us, and 
encircles us with the splendour of ten thousand 
stars. Then we not only are led to see that the 
greater portion of our being lies beyond either pre- 
sent joy or sorrow, but are also led to inquire into 
those outlying hopes, and to survey the whole 
breadth of that goodly inheritance, of which we 
are the heirs. 

These inquiries and surveys are, as we shall see, 
most blessed in their nature, and purifying, as well 
as comforting, in their tendency. They are fraught 
with holiness and full of joy. They tend to make 
us forget the present in the future, and to assimilate 
us to the objects thus vividly presented to us. For, 
though it is true that " tears make the harvest of 
the heart to grow; " yet it is the anticipated light 
of the unrisen morning that ripens it. 

This is more than mere negative consolation. It 
is positive and efficacious. The negative is, " Where- 
fore should a living man complain? " or, " There the 
wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at 
rest." This, so far as it goes, is precious. But 
God has given us something more than this. The 
hope which he furnishes is not merely the hope of 
a quiet close to this world's weariness, but the 



PREFACE. Vll 

hope of infinite gladness which is then to begin. 
There is a passage in Job which exemplifies both 
of these very fitly. Groaning under the pressure 
of no common grief, he cries out, 

Oh that thou wouldst hide me in the grave ! 
That thou wouldst keep me secret ! 
Till thy wrath be past. 

As if he would be glad to be hidden any where, 

even in the grave, from such calamities. But then 

this is not enough. This is mere negative comfort. 

It is the mere cessation of suffering. And this does 

not content him. He bethinks himself, and cries 

out again, 

Oh that thou wouldst appoint me a set time 
And remember me ! 

He cannot bear the thought of always lying in the 

dust, even though it is a secure hiding-place from 

the storms of earth. He would not be forgotten there. 

He would have a time set, at the end of which God 

might remember him. Then abruptly he asks, 

If a man die shall he live ? 

and, evidently answering himself, " Yes, he shall 

live again," he calmly adds, 

All the days of my appointed time will I wait, 
Till my change come. 

For it is resurrection-change he looks for, and re- 
joices in as his hope. When that day arrives the 
trumpet shall sound, the voice of God shall speak, — 

Thou shalt call, 
And I will answer ! 

But how is he so assured of being thus remembered 

of God? He knows how precious in his eyes is the 

dust of his saints, — 

Thou wilt have a desire 
To the work of thine hands. 



rill PREFACE. 

Thus, though Job begins with what is merely ne- 
gative, that is, the ending of his grief and shame, 
he cannot rest there, but presses on, in rapid hope, 
to the beginning of his joy and glory. It is the 
morning, with all its new life and reviving sun- 
shine, that rises before his view, and from afar 
pours into him its healing light. 

"The fashion of this world passeth away." This 
cheers us, for it assures us that no grief shall live 
long. But the fashion of " the world to come " en- 
dures. This is unspeakably gladdening; for all 
that that better " age " brings with it shall abide 
for ever. The inheritance is vast, the city is 
"joyous," the mansions are many, the title is sure, 
and the possession is everlasting. 

Jerusalem ! Jerusalem ! 

Would God I were in thee ! 
Oh that my sorrows had an end, 

Thy joys that I might see. 

Thus sweetly sung one of Scotland's holiest sons 
in the olden time. Broken with many griefs, he 
thus poured out his soul, — weary and home-sick, as 
a stranger here. And will not " night " fail in one 
of its objects, if it does not make us long for the 
" day " ? Will not tribulation be frustrated if it do 
not stir within us this " earnest expectation," this 
" groaning within ourselves," this "fervent long- 
ing," — this home-sickness which the saints in other 
days felt so tenderly and truly ? And all the more, 
because " now is our salvation nearer than when 
we believed ;" for we have arrived at the last stage 
of our journey, and a few more days will suffice to 
bring us home. 

Kelso, December 19, 1849. 



MORNING OF JOT. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE ANTICIPATIONS. 

The Church of God on earth is not what 
she seems ; nay, is what she seems not. She 
is not a beggar, yet she seems one ; she is 
a King's bride, yet she seems not. It was 
so with her Lord while here. He was not 
what men thought him ; he was what 
they thought him not. 

It is in this way that the world is put to 
shame, its thoughts confounded, its great- 
ness abased before God. And it is in this 
way that Divine wisdom gets large space 
over which to spread itself, step by step, 
and to open out its infinite resources slowly 

B 



2 THE ANTICIPATIONS. 

and with care, (like one exhibiting his 
treasures,) that no part, no turn in all its 
windings may be left unobserved. It is 
not the result only that God desires that 
we should see and wonder at, but the pro- 
cess by which it is reached, so unlikely to 
effect it, yet so steadily moving forward to 
its end, and so strangely successful in bring- 
ing about that end. The planting of the 
" trees of God " in Eden, in full strength 
and fruitfulness at once, was not such an 
exhibition of wisdom as that which we 
ourselves see in yearly process before us, 
when God out of a small, shapeless seed 
brings a stately pine or palm. 

In truth, this is the law of our world. 
It might not be so at first in Eden, when 
only the result was given to view ; but it 
has been so since, and is so now, for God 
is showing us most minutely how " fear- 
fully and wonderfully " all things are 
made, and we among the rest, in soul and 
in body, in our first birth and in our 



THE ANTICIPATIONS. 3 

second, in our natural and in our spiritual 
growth. 

The tree, in winter, is not what it ap- 
pears — dead; nay, it is what it appears 
not — alive ; full in every part, root, stem, 
and branch, of vigorous though hid- 
den vitality, a vitality which frosts and 
storms are but maturing, not quenching. 
All summer-life is there ; all autumn 
fruitfulness is there ; though neither visi- 
ble. It wraps up within itself the germs 
of future verdure, and awaits the coming 
spring. So is it with the church, in this 
age of wintry night; for it is both night 
and winter with her. Her present condi- 
tion ill accords with her prospects. No 
one, in looking at her, could guess what she 
either is or is to be ; could conceive what 
God has in store for her. For eye has 
nothing to do with the seeing of it, nor ear 
with the hearing of it. No one, in observ- 
ing her garb or her deportment, or the 
treatment she meets with at the hands of 
b 2 



THE ANTICIPATIONS. 



men, or the sharp, heavy discipline through 
which she is passing, could take the mea- 
sure of her hopes. Faith finds difficulty 
in realizing her prospects, and she can 
hardly at times credit the greatness of her 
heritage, when thinking of what she is and 
remembering what she has been. 

It often seems strange to us, and it must 
seem much more so to unfallen beings, that 
saints should be found at all in such a 
world, — a world without God, a world of 
atheists, — a world that from the days of 
Cain has been the rejecter of his Son, both 
as the sacrifice for sin and as the heir of 
all things. It is not on such a spot that 
we should naturally expect to find sons of 
God. Next to hell, it is the unlikeliest 
place for a soul that loves God to dwell in, 
even for a day : and if a stranger, travers- 
ing the universe in search of God's little 
flock, his chosen ones, were to put to us 
the question, "Where are they to be found," 
certainly he would be astonished when told 



THE ANTICIPATIONS. 5 

that they were in that very world where 
Satan reigned, and from which God had 
been cast out ! Would he not say, " Either 
this is a mistake and a chance, or else it is 
the very depth of unfathomable wisdom." 
For we do not go to the crater's slope for 
verdure ; nor for flowers to the desert ; nor 
for the plants of heaven to the shores of the 
lake of fire. Yet it is so with the church. 
It is strange perhaps to find a Joseph in 
Egypt, or a Rahab in Jericho, or an Oba- 
diah in the house of Ahab ; but it is more 
amazing to find saints in the world at all. 
Yet they are here. In spite of every thing 
ungenial in soil and air, they are here. 
They never seem to become acclimatized, 
yet they do not die out, but are ever re- 
newed. The enemy labours to uproot 
them, but they are ineradicable. Nay, 
they thrive and bear fruit. It is a miracle ; 
but yet so it is. Here the great Husband- 
man is rearing his plants from generation 
to generation. Here the great Potter 

B 3 



S THE ANTICIPATIONS, 

Fashions his vessels. Here the great 
Master-builder hews and polishes the stones 
for his eternal temple. 

Thus, then, one characteristic of the 
church is, the unlikeness of her present to 
her future condition. It is this that marks 
her out, that isolates her, as a gem in the 
heart of a rock, as a vein of gold in a mine. 
Originally she belonged to the mass, but 
she was drawn apart from it, or it fell from 
off her and left her alone, like a pillar 
among ruins. Outwardly she retains much 
of her former self; but inwardly she has 
undergone a change that has assimilated 
her to " the world to come." Thus her 
affinities and her sympathies are all with 
that better world. Her dwelling is still 
here, and in external appearance she is 
much as she used to be ; but the internal 
transformation has made her feel that this 
is not her home, and filled her with an 
ticipations of the city and the kingdom to 
come, of which she has been made the 



THE ANTICIPATIONS. 7 

heir. Her kindred according to the flesB. 
are here, but she is now allied to Jehovah 
by the. ties of blood, and this draws her 
soul upwards. 

Cut off from a home and a heritage 
here, yet assured of both hereafter, she of 
necessity lives a life of anticipation. Giv- 
ing credit to the message of grace, and 
resting on the blood of Him through whose 
cross that grace came down to her, she an- 
ticipates her acquittal at the judgment. 
Realizing her oneness with the risen and 
ascended Christ, she feels as if already seat- 
ed with him in heavenly places. Looking 
forward to the arrival of the King, she an- 
ticipates the kingdom. In darkness she 
anticipates the light; in sorrow she an- 
ticipates the joy ; in the night she antici- 
pates the morning ; in shame she antici- 
pates the glory. ' e All are mine," she says, 
" whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or 
the world, or life, or death, or things pre- 
sent, or things to come ; all are mine ; fo/ 



8 THE ANTICIPATIONS. 

I am Christ's, and Christ is God's." In 
these anticipations she lives. They make 
up a large portion of her daily being. 
They cheer her onward in spite of the 
rough wastes she has to pass through. 
They comfort her ; or when they do not 
quite succeed in this, they at least calm 
and soothe her. They do not turn mid« 
night into noon, but they make it less op- 
pressive, and take off "the night side of 
nature." 

"I am not what I seem," she says to 
herself; "and this is joy. I am not the 
beggared outcast that the world takes me 
for. I am richer far than they. They 
have their riches now, but mine are com- 
ing when theirs are gone. They have 
their joys now ; but mine are coming when 
theirs have ended in eternal weeping. I 
live in the future ; my treasure is in 
heaven, and my heart has gone up to be 
where my treasure is. I shall soon be seen 
to be what I now seem not. My kingdom 



THE ANTICIPATIONS. 9 

is at hand ; my sun is about to rise ; I 
shall soon see the King in his beauty ; I 
shall soon be keeping festival, and the joy 
of my promised morning will make me 
forget that I ever wept." 

Thus she lives in the morning, ere the 
morning has come. She takes a wide sweep 
of vision, round and round, without a limit ; 
for faith has no horizon ; it looks beyond 
life, and earth, and the ages, into eternity. 

Beyond the death-bed and beyond the 
grave, she sees resurrection. Beyond the 
broken hearts and severed bands of time, she 
realizes and clasps the eternal love-links ; 
beyond the troubles of the hour, and be- 
yond the storm that is to wreck the world, 
she casts her eye, and feels as if transported 
into the kingdom that cannot be moved, 
as if already she had taken up her abode 
in the New Salem, the city of peace and 
righteousness. Beyond the region of the 
falling leaf she passes on to the green 
pastures, and sits down under the branches 



10 THE ANTICIPATIONS. 

of the tree of life which is in the midst 
of the paradise of God. Losing sight of 
the bitterness of absence from the beloved 
of her heart, she enters the bridal-chamber 
and tastes the bridal joy ; keeping festival 
even in the desert, and enjoying the sab- 
bath rest amid the tumults of a stormy 
world. 



CHAPTER H. 

THE NIGHT-WATCH. 

We are not of the world, though we are 
in the world. So " we are not of the 
night/' though we are in the night. We 
are " children of the day;" we belong to 
the day, and the day belongs to us, as our 
true heritage, though it has not yet dawned. 
Hope rests there; and though deferred, will 
not always tarry, nor when it comes will it 
shame our trust. " When the desire com- 
eth it shall be a tree of life." 

Night is around us still ; but it is not 
merely one of weeping, it is also one of 
watching. No sorrow is to make us less 
watchful ; nay, much more. So far from 
tribulation throwing us off our guard, it 



12 THE NIGHT-WATCH. 

should lead to added vigilance. It pre- 
vents our falling asleep, as we should cer- 
tainly do were all peaceful and prosperous. 
It makes the night more cold and bitter to 
us, thereby rendering us more weary of it, 
and more eager for the day. Were the 
night air mild, and the night sky clear, we 
should grow contented with it, and cease 
to watch for day -break. 

This is our night-watch. To this the 
Master has appointed us during his absence. 
" Watch ye therefore ; for ye know not 
when the master of the house cometh, at 
even, or at midnight, or at the cock-crow- 
ing, or in the morning : lest coming sud- 
denly he find you sleeping. And what I 
say unto you I say unto all, Watch." 
(Mark xiii. 35 — 37.) It is the prospect of 
morning and of the Master's return that 
keeps us watching, — especially in these 
last days, when watch after watch has come 
and gone, and he has not yet arrived. 
" His going forth is prepared as the morn- 



THE NIGHT-WATCH. 1$ 

ing" (Hos. vi. 3) ; and that morning can* 
not now be distant. 

The church must fulfil ner night-watch. 
Whether long or short, perilous or easVj 
she must fulfil it. It is watching to which 
she is specially called ; and sadly will she 
belie her profession, as well as disobey her 
Lord, if she watches not. She need not 
think to substitute other duties for this, as 
more needful, more important, or more in 
character. She dare not say, " I love, I 
believe, I pray, I praise, why should I also 
watch ? will not these do instead of watch- 
ing, oris not watching included in these ?" 
Her Lord has bidden her watch, and no 
other duty, no other grace, can be a substi- 
tute or an excuse for this. 

She is to believe ; but that is not all ; she 
is also to watch. She is to rejoice ; but 
that is not all ; she is also to watch. She 
is to love ; but that is not all ; she is also 
to watch. She is to wait ; but that is not 
all ; she is also to tvatch. She is to long ; 



14 THE NIGHT-WATCH. 

but that is not all ; she is also to watch. 
This is to be her special attitude, and no- 
thing can compensate for it. By this she 
is to be known in all ages, as the watching 
one. By this the world is to be made to 
feel the difference between itself and her. 
By this she is specially to show how truly 
she feels herself to be a stranger here. 

Men ask her, Why stand ye gazing up 
into heaven ? Her reply is, " I am watch- 
ing." Men taunt her, and say, Why this 
unrestfulness ? Her reply is, " I am watch- 
ing." Men think it strange that she runs 
not with them to the same excess of riot. 
(1 Peter iv. 4.) She tells them, " I am 
watching." They ask her to come forth 
and join their gaiety, to come forth and 
sing their songs, to come forth and taste 
their pleasures, that thus they may teach 
her to forget her sorrows. She refuses, 
saying, " I dare not, I am watching." 
The scoffer mocks her, and says, Where is 
the promise of his coming ? She heeds not, 



THE NIGHT-WATCH. 15 

but continues watching, and clasps her 
hope more firmly. 

Sometimes too a feeble, doubting, or, it 
may be, inconsistent saint, asks in wonder, 
How are you so strong, so hardy, so able 
for the struggle, so successful in the battle ? 
She answers, "X watch." Or he asks, 
How do you keep up a tone so elevated, 
and maintain a walk so close, so consist- 
ent, so unearthly ? She answers, " I 
watch." Or he asks, How do you over- 
come sloth, and selfishness, and love of 
ease ; or check fretfulness and anxiety, or 
gain the victory over a delaying spirit ? 
She answers, " I watch." Or he asks, 
How do you make head against your fears, 
and challenge danger, and defy enemies, 
and keep under the flesh ? She replies, " I 
watch." Or he asks, How do you wrestle 
with your griefs, and dry up your tears, 
and heal your wounds, nay, glory ia 
tribulation ? She answers, *' I watch." 

Oh what this watching can do, to one 
c 2 



16 THE NIGHT-WATCH. 

who understands it aright ! Faith alone 
will not do. Love alone will not do. Ex- 
pectation alone will not do. Obedience 
alone will not do. There must be watching. 
And this watching takes for granted the 
suddenness and uncertainty of the day of 
the Lord. It does not say, the Lord must 
come in my day ; but it says, the Lord may 
come in my day, therefore I must be on the 
outlook. This may come is the secret of a 
watchful spirit. Without it we cannot 
watch. We may love, and hope, and wait ; 
but we cannot watch. Our lamps are to 
be always trimmed. Why? Not merely 
because the Bridegroom is to come, but 
because we know not how soon he may 
come. Our loins are to be always girt up. 
Why? Not simply because we know that 
there is to be a coming ; but because we 
know not when that coming is to be.* 

* Thus one wrote two hundred years ago : " All is 
night that is here, therefore sigh and long for the dawn- 
ing of that morning, and the breaking of that day of the 
coming of the Son of man, when the shadows shall flee 



THE NIGHT-WATCH. 17 

The Lord foresaw the spirit of unwatch- 
fulness into which his people would be apt 
to fall, while he tarried, and he warns us 
against it. He would have us always to 
remember that there will be a danger of 
our becoming easy-minded and earthly; 
content with his absence instead of mourn- 
ing because of it; content with his de- 
lay instead of joining in the primitive 
cry, " How long." He saw that the world 
would throw us off our guard; that few 
would really keep awake and watch ; that 
many would get tired with watching, and 
find out excuses for not watching ; that 
many would sit down and try to make 
themselves comfortable here without him. 
Hence he so often repeated the warning — 

away. Persuade yourself that the King is coming. 
Wait with the wearied night — watch for the breaking of 
the eastern sky, and think that ye have not a morrow** 
— Samuel Rutherford. If, as the same writer says, 
" love is sick to hear tell of a to-morrow," how muck 
more of a thousand years ! 



18 THE NIGHT-WATCH. 

Watch! Hence he added, "lest coming 
suddenly he find you sleeping" 

His desire is, that we should be so 
watching, that when he cometh and 
knocketh, we may open unto him immedi- 
ately. (Luke xii. 36.) And he pronounces 
a special blessing upon those servants whom 
he finds thus, promising that " he will gird 
himself, and make them sit down to meat, 
and will come forth and serve them." To 
be in such an attitude of watchfulness as 
that we shall be ready to open to him im- 
mediately, is that to which he has promised 
so special a reward, so wondrous an honour. 
Ah ! who amongst us is in this condition 
in these last days ? Should we be ready to 
open to him immediately were he arriving 
now ? Should we not be thr.own into con- 
fusion at the news of his coming, like 
servants' unprepared for their master's re- 
turn, and not counting on it so soon? 
Should we not have to be getting ready ^ 



THE NIGHT-WATCH. 19 

when we should be opening the door? 
Should we not be running to put on our 
needful and proper raiment instead of go- 
ing forth to welcome him ? Ah, what con- 
fusion in the household, what amazement, 
what fear, what bustle, what running to 
and fro, would there be in our day, were 
the tidings to be brought us, " the Lord 
has come ! " 

In the repeated command to watch, there 
is much of rebuke. The Lord could not 
trust us to remember it of ourselves, or 
obey unbidden. Had he been able to 
count on perfect love in us to himself — 
love full and deep like his own, would he 
have thought of such a command ? would 
it have been needed ? It would not. All 
that would have been needful would have 
been to tell us that he meant to return ; 
love would have supplied ' the rest, and, of 
itself, have made us watchful ; love would 
have made it impossible that it should be 
otherwise. It would have needed neither 



20 THE NIGHT-WATCH. 

the command nor the declaration of uncer- 
tainty and suddenness. It would have 
anticipated all these. It would have acted 
upon them unbidden. But the Lord could 
not trust us. He could not trust our love; 
and therefore he adds the command, there- 
fore he reiterates the warning. It is 
strange and sad indeed, that neither the 
power of love, nor the awe of the command, 
can quicken us into watchfulness or rouse 
us into preparation. 

The announcements of the suddenness 
of His coming are very distinct and par- 
ticular. There is nothing vague about 
them ; nothing to take off the edge of the 
warning which they contain. They are 
much more specific and repeated than those 
of His first coming. His first advent took 
the church by surprise, even though he 
had set the time and numbered the years. 
How much more then is his second coming 
likely to surprise us, when, by the way in 
which he has announced it, he has pre- 



THE NIGHT-WATCH. 21 

vented us from counting on any interval at 
all ! Yet we watch not ! Neither his mea- 
suring the time in the one case, nor his 
leaving it unmeasured in the other, pro- 
duces the designed effect. " When the 
Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on 
the earth ? " 

During this our night-watch, faith is to 
be ever vigorous and in motion. For it is 
the root of watchfulness. Without faith 
one can hardly have the idea of what it is 
to watch. For all the objects towards 
which watchfulness turns, are connected 
with things unseen, — an unseen Saviour, 
and an unseen kingdom. 

When first we knew the Lord and be- 
lieved on him as the peace-maker, not only 
were we freely forgiven, but we were de- 
livered from a present evil world. Things 
present fell off from us ; things to come 
gathered round us. What was once 
shadowy became real ; what once seemed 
real seemed then a shadow. Christ's words 



22 THE NIGHT-WATCH. 

became real words ; his truths real truths ; 
his promises real promises. All else ap- 
peared unreal. The veil was not with- 
drawn, but we realized what was within it. 
The future did not become the present, nor 
the invisible the visible ; but we felt as if 
they were so. " Our faith was the sub- 
stance of things hoped for, the evidence of 
things not seen." Believing then that the 
Lord is coming, that the time is short, that 
the interval is uncertain, and that his arrival 
will be sudden, we watch. Unbelief throws 
us off our guard ; but faith sends us to our 
watch-tower. We know what our Lord 
meant when he said, " Blessed are they 
that have not seen and yet have believed." 
Or, altering the words of our Lord, may 
we not also say, " Blessed are they that 
have seen and yet have not believed ? " To 
see and yet not to believe, is one of the 
things that faith teaches us, and one of the 
things that quicken watchfulness. We 
look upon a world full of ungodliness, and 



THE NIGHT-WATCH. 2& 

yet believe not that God has forsaken the 
earth. We see the world's wisdom worship- 
ped, but yet believe not that it is wisdom. 
We see the power of evil, and yet believe 
not that evil shall triumph. We see con- 
fusion every where, and yet believe not but 
that order is God's law. We see a divided 
church, and yet believe that the church is 
one. We see mighty kingdoms ruling, and 
yet believe not that they shall abide. We 
see the saints trodden down, but yet be- 
lieve not in their shame or extinction. We 
look upon the tomb of the righteous, and 
yet believe not that he is dead. We see 
the church's persecutions and defeats, and 
yet believe not only that she is conqueror, 
but invincible. We see the march of Anti- 
christ, but yet believe not in his progress, 
save as a progress to doom. We see the 
world's joy, and yet believe not that it is 
joy. We see the saint's sorrow, and yet 
believe not that he is sorrowful. We see 
night, thick, deep night around us, but 



24 THE NIGHT-WATCH. 

yet we believe not in the night, but in the 
day. 

Thus faith triumphs. We believe, we 
trust, we hope ; and, so doing, we stand 
above the world. We lift up our eyes to 
the hills whence cometh our help. We 
look towards the east, where the dawn 
breaks. We ivatch for the morning. Our 
night-watch has been long and weary ; 
but the morning will soon end it.* The 
watching, the waiting, and the hoping 
will then be done, but the loving will be 
for ever. 

We ivatch ; for we know of no interval 
between us and the Lord's appearing. 
The hour of our meeting with him, and 
with those whom we have loved and lost, 
may be nigh at hand. Sooner than we 
think, we may be joined together insepar- 
ably, our bodies clothed with resurrection- 

* " Tell her that the day is near the dawning, the 
sky is riving, (cleaving,) our Beloved will be on us ere 
ever we "be aware." — Rutherford. 



THE NIGHT-WATCH, 25 

health, and our souls rejoicing in holiness 
and love. 

We watch ; for it is night, and though 
we are not children of the night, still the 
night with its shadows rests heavily upon 
us, making us with wistful keenness to 
look out for its passing away. We grow 
more dissatisfied with it as it deepens. It 
brings so many griefs, it gathers round us 
so many temptations, it calls up so many 
dangers, it gives courage to so many 
enemies, that we grow troubled at its last- 
ing so long. Yet we cannot shake it off. 
God's purpose must be served, and his 
time must run out. Till then let us pos- 
sess our souls in patience, whilst watch- 
ing for day-spring, and stirring up our 
souls with the assurance that we know of 
nothing between us and the ending of our 
long night-watch. 

We watch ; for the day is ours, with all 
that it contains of gladness and sunshine. 
We are weary of the night, and we rejoice 



26 THE NIGHT-WATCH. 

that it is not ours, though we are in it ; 
but that the day is ours. Just as we can 
say, " the kingdom is ours/ 5 so we can say, 
" the day is ours." And we watch for it 
as being ours. Its light is ours ; its blue 
sky is ours ; its mild air is ours ; its cheer- 
ful sounds are ours ; its friendly greetings 
are ours ; all that it calls forth of joy, and 
health, and purity are ours. Need any won- 
der that we should watch for such a day ? 
We watch; foi the night is far spent. 
Not only do we know of nought before vs 
ere the Lord arrive ; but we know of much 
behind us. Hours, years, ages have gone 
by. And if the whole night was to be 
brief, only "a little while," then surely 
very much of it must now be over. " The 
night is far spent," says the apostle ; liter- 
ally, it is " cut off," it is foreshortened, that 
is, it is becoming shorter, it is drawing to 
a close* Behind us are lying centuries oi 

* v vi/£ TcpotKoxj/tv, Rom. xiii. 12. Thus Rutherford 
expresses the idea of the passage. After telling us that 



THE NIGHT-WATCH. 27 

tears and shadows ; the greater part of the 
little while must be past ; the day must be 
at hand. The nearness makes the thought 
of day doubly welcome. We bend towards 
it with warm longings ; we strain our eyes 
to catch the first token of it ; we rouse 
ourselves to vigilance, knowing that now is 
our salvation nearer than when we be- 
lieved. 

How it disappoints, how it damps, to be 
told, there are centuries more of this night- 
watching still to come ! Could that be 
proved, it would sadly chill our hope. We 
might at once come down from our watch- 
tower and give up our expectations. To 
" look for and haste unto the coming of 
the day of God,"* would be no longer a 

" the blast of the last trumpet is now hard at hand," he 
adds, " this world's span-length of time is now drawn 
to less than half an inch." 

* 2 Peter iii. 12. — The margin has the true render- 
ing here, " hasting the coming of the day of God." By 
looking, and praying, and watching, we hasten that day, 
though it be fixed in the purpose of God ; just as we are 
instruments (by prayer, &c.) in the conversion of a 
friend, though that also depends en the purpose of God. 
d 2 



28 THE NIGHT-WATCH. 

duty. The last generation of the church, 
living at the close of the millennium, might 
get up into the watch-tower, but for us, 
watching would be a name, a mere attitude 
of form or show. 

It has ever been Satan's object to inter- 
pose some object between the church and 
her Lord's arrival ; but never did he light 
upon a more specious, more successful de- 
vice than that of making the interposed 
object a glorious and blessed one. To no 
other would the church have listened. 
She would have shrunk and turned away 
from a thousand years' sorrow ; but she is 
attracted and dazzled by the promise of a 
thousand years' rest and joy. Yet, is the 
interposition of any fixed interval, (be it 
sad or joyous,) lawful or scriptural ? If the 
Lord's advent be thrust into the distance, 
it matters not what may be introduced to 
fill the interval. If the Hope of the 
church be hidden, it is of small moment 
whether it be by a shroud of sackcloth or 
by a veil of woven gold. 



THE NIGHT-WATCH. 29 

God deals with the church as one. 
Though consisting of many generations, he 
looks upon it as one body. And in refer- 
ence to her hope, he has so framed his 
revelation, that every generation of the 
church should stand upon the same footing 
as the last. How has this been done ? 
How has the first age, and how have all 
subsequent ages, been placed in the same 
position as the last ? Simply by concealing 
the interval. In this thing it has been 
truly " the glory of God to conceal a mat- 
ter." (Prov. xxv. 2.) For by this method, 
so simple and so natural, each age of the 
church has been made to feel, precisely as 
the last will feel, — to watch, just as the last 
will watch, when the Lord is in very deed 
at hand. And thus that body which is 
spread over centuries, has at all times been 
made to occupy a position and present a 
character, the same as if it had been a 
body whose life and actings were summed 
up in one generation. So that any known 
d3 



80 THE NIGHT-WATCH. 

interval interposed before the advent, alters 
the posture, destroys the character, and 
breaks the oneness of the church, while it 
defeats the object which God had so 
specially in view in keeping the times and 
seasons in his own power. 

Often, since the Lord left the earth, has 
the watch been changed and the guard re- 
lieved. God has not tried too sorely the 
faith of any one age by making the watch 
too long. In mercy he has cut down man's 
age from patriarchal longevity to three- 
score years and ten, lest the overwearied 
watchers should sink under the toil and 
hardship. It is this that makes unwatch- 
fulness so inexcusable. Adam, or Seth, or 
Methuselah, or Noah, might have had the 
edge of their watchfulness blunted by the 
long conflict of nine hundred years ; but 
what excuse have we for heedlessness? 
Our time of service is brief, and to fall 
asleep or grow impatient, would indicate 
sad indolence and unfaithfulness. "What! 



THE NIGHT-WATCH. 31 

could ye not watch with me one hour ? 
watch and pray, lest ye enter into tempta- 
tion." If the Lord come not in our day, 
by his personal presence to end our watch- 
ing, we still cannot complain of over- 
endurance or exhaustion, seeing we shall 
be so soon relieved and taken into his 
nearer presence, there to watch in rest 
and joy and light, as here we have watched 
in weariness and grief and darkness.* 

* " Blessed consummation of this weary and sorrow- 
ful world ! I give it welcome, I hail its approach, I 
wait its coming more than they that watch for the 
morning. Over the wrecks of a world I weep ; over 
broken hearts of parents, over suffering infancy, over 
the unconscious clay of sweet innocents, over the un- 
timely births that have never seen the light, or have 
just looked upon it and shut their eyes for a season, 
until the glorious light of the resurrection-morn. O 
my Lord, come away ! Hasten with all thy congregated 
ones. My soul desireth to see the King in his beauty, 
and the beautiful ones whom he shall bring along with 
him ; when I shall see these sweet babes, snatched 
from a parent's weeping eyes, and a parent's sorrowful 
yet joyful heart." — Irving's Lectures on the Revelation 
vol. i. p. 77. 



CHAPTER m. 

THE EARNESTS OF THE MORNING. 

The true morning has not yet broken ; 
hardly does it give forth any sign of break- 
ing, save the deeper darkness that is the 
sure foreteller of the dawn. 

It is still night upon the earth ; and 
" the children of the night " are going to 
and fro in the world's streets, doing " the 
unfruitful works of darkness;" "walking 
in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, 
revellings, banquetings, and abominable 
idolatries;" yielding to the "flattering 
lips " of the seducer, that " lieth in wait 
at every corner," in " the black and dark 
night " (Prov. vii. 9 — 21) ; making " pro- 
▼ision for the flesh," by " living in rioting 



THE EARNESTS OF THE MORNING. 33 

and drunkenness, in chambering and wan- 
tonness, in strife and envying " (Rom. xiii. 
13) ; compassing themselves about with 
sparks of their own kindling, which only 
sadden the gloom and make us feel more 
truly that it is night. 

It is still night to the church ; a night 
of danger, a night of -weariness, a night of 
weeping. Her firmament is dark and 
troubled. The promise of morning is sure* 
and she is looking out for it with fixed and 
pleading eye, sore tried with the long 
gloom. Yet it has not arisen. It is still 
deferred — deferred in mercy to an unready 
Vorld, to whom the ending of this night 
Jiall be the closing of hope, and the seal- 
ing of ruin, and the settling down of the 
mfinite darkness. For " the Lord is not 
slack concerning his promise, as some men 
count slackness, but is long-suffering to 
us-ward, not willing that any should perish, 
but that all should come to repentance." 

But though it is night, there are times. 



34 THE EARNESTS OF 

both in the saint's own history and the 
church's annals, which may be spoken of 
as mornings even now. Such was the 
st morning " to Adam when Seth was born 
to him after Abel's death. (Gen. iv. 25.) 
Such was the " morning " to Noah when 
the flood dried up, and the face of the 
earth was renewed. Such was the " morn- 
ing " to Jacob when the tidings came to 
him that Joseph was yet alive. Such was 
the " morning " to Naomi when Ruth and 
Boaz wiped off the tears of widowhood, 
and when in her old age she " saw her 
seed," and " took the child and laid it in 
her bosom." (Ruth iv. 16.) Such was 
Hannah's " morning " when, after long 
years of bitterness, " the Lord granted her 
petition," and " she went her way and was 
no more sad." (1 Sam. i. 18.) Such was 
the u morning " that dawned on Job when 
the Lord accepted him, and turned his 
captivity, giving him twice as much as he 
had before, " blessing his latter end more 



THE MORNING. 35 

than his beginning."* Such was Israel's 
" morning " when the Lord turned back 
the captivity of Zion, " making them like 
men that dream/' filling " their mouth 
with laughter and their tongue with sing- 
ing," in the day of their deliverance from 
exile. 

Thus there are "mornings" ever and 
anon bursting on us now. They are in- 
deed little more than brief brightenings of 
the darkness — lulls in the long tempest 
that is to rage unspent till the Lord come. 
Still we may call them " mornings/' just 
as we give the name of mid-day to the dim 
kindlings of the sky at daily noon, in the 
six months' arctic night, when the sun 

* Job xlii. 9 — 12. Yet even here there seems an 
allusion to the true morning yet to come, and an intim- 
ation that all this restored fulness was but an " earnest." 
For, as has been remarked, while Job has all his sheep, 
oxen, &c. exactly doubled to him, his children are not 
doubled. He had lost seven, and he gets back but 
seven ; for he must look to the resurrection-morning 
for the restoration of his seven lost ones, and not till 
then is he to get the double. 



86 THE EARNESTS OF 

keeps below the horizon. Or, better and 
truer, we may call them earnests of the 
morning — that morning which is to out- 
shine all mornings, and to swallow up alike 
the darkness and the light of a present evi 1 
world. Dim and transient as are these 
earnests, they are unutterably gladdening 
They cheer the heavy darkness and are 
pledges of sun-rise. 

Our life on earth, " the life that we 
now live in the flesh," is thus made up of 
many nights and many mornings. It is 
not all one night, nor is it all one day. 
Every thing pertaining to it seems to re~ 
volve or alternate. It is a life of sinking 
and rising, of going and returning, of 
ebbing and flowing, of shade and bright- 
ness. The health of the soul seems in 
some measure to need such changes, 
just as the soil owes much of its fruit- 
fulness to the vicissitudes of the sea- 
sons. 

As there is no even continuance of 



THE MORNING. 37 

constant good, so there is no equal pressure 
of unbroken evil. As the season of calm 
is brief, so is the burst of the storm. The 
days of darkness are many — more in num- 
ber than the days of light, yet they do not 
last always. " Many are the afflictions of 
the righteous/' yet there are breaks in the 
line of evil, for it is added, " the Lord de- 
livereth him out of them all." 

Our God has so fashioned us, and so 
regulated our circumstances, that each 
grief has its crisis, its spring-tide, after 
which it seems, as if by a law, to recede. 
Not only can the soul not bear beyond a 
fixed amount of pain or pressure without 
giving way, but it cannot be kept too long 
upon the stretch. If the tension is pro- 
tracted, the " spirit fails," the mind breaks 
down. Or if this is not the case, callous- 
ness comes on ; we grow stupid and in- 
sensible. Affliction loses its power by be- 
ing too heavy or too long. 

The highest mountain has its summit ; 



38 THE EARNESTS OF 

the deepest mine-shaft has its lowest level. 
Nor, in general, are these long in being 
reached. So even when there *is sorrow 
upon sorrow, there is respite between, or 
gladness at the close of the dark series. 
The outer and the inner world have, to 
some extent, the same laws of alternation 
and relief. Tides and variations seem 
needful in both. Thus it was in the life of 
David. At one time he stood with glad- 
ness in the courts of his God ; at another 
he bemoaned himself, saying, "When shall 
I come and appear before God ? " At one 
time he went with the multitude ; at 
another he wandered in solitude and exile. 
At one time he kept holy day with the 
thousands of Israel, joining in the voice of 
joy and praise ; at another his tears were 
his meat day and night. At one time his 
soul was cast down and disquieted within 
him ; at another he praised Jehovah as the 
health of his countenance. At one time 
he could look with open eye upon the 



THE MORNING. 39 

glory of Jehovah in his house ; at another 
he could only remember him from the land 
of Jordan *and of the Hermonites from the 
hill Mizar. At one time deep called unto 
deep, all God's waves went over him; at 
another the Lord commanded his loving- 
kindness and opened his mouth in song. 
Such were the tides of David's history — 
the vicissitudes of day and night in his ( 
varying course. True type of every saint's 
history, not only in the old age of shadows, 
but in our own ! True example of the 
changes and tossings marked out for the 
church in her course on earth from shame 
to glory ! What else are we to look for till 
the Lord come ? In the first age of the 
church, in the time of righteous Abel, it 
was so. " The evening and the morning 
were the first day." In the last age of the 
church, just ere the second Adam is brought 
in, it shall be no less so. " The evening 
and the morning were the sixth day." 
Then comes the world's seventh and 
£ 2 



40 THE EARNESTS OP 

brightest day — a day of cloudless splen- 
dour, unbroken and unending. 

How wise, how gracious that' it should 
be so ! One firmament of gloom, spanning 
our whole life-time, would be intolerable. 
One long heavy chain of grief, with which 
we could never get familiar, and on which 
we could never learn to look calmly ; or 
one linked succession of griefs, ever tearing 
open old wounds and adding new ones, 
would wither up existence and blight life 
before its prime. Man's nature could not 
bear it ; man's heart would sink under it, 
unless made totally callous by some un- 
natural process, or sustained by daily 
miracle ; in which case grief would cease 
to be grief, and there could be no such 
thing as trial or chastisement at all. 

Hence, He who " knoweth our frame 
and remembereth that we are dust," not 
only " stayeth his rough wind in the day 
of his east wind;" but often, for a season, 
bids both be still, and breathes on us onljr 



THE MORNING. 41 

with the freshness of the mild south. For 
thus has he spoken, " I will not contend 
for ever, neither will I be always wroth ; 
for the spirit should fail before me, and the 
souls which I have made." (Isa. lvii. 16.) 
Such then is God's purpose concerning us, 
and such his reasons for it. The purpose 
is a gracious and a tender one ; no less so 
are the reasons for it. He tells us, that 
though he does, at seasons, contend with 
us, yet he will not prolong the contest be- 
yond a certain time or limit ; for in such a 
strife, who could stand before the Mighty 
One ? " In measure when it shooteth forth 
thou wilt debate with it " (Isa. xxvii. 8) ; 
that is, he will set bounds to the sorrow 
and the smiting which cannot be over- 
passed ; he will say to them, even in their 
fiercest course, (< Thus far shalt thou go, 
and no farther." For were he to allow 
that tide to roll on unhindered, who, even 
of his own chosen and beloved ones, could 

£ 3 



42 THE EARNESTS OF 

withstand its rush, or sustain themselves 
amid its deepening waters ? 

Yet let us not forget what the sorrow 
has done for us while it lasted ; and what 
the night has been, though dark and sad. 

It has been a night of grief, yet a night 
of blessing ; a night in which there may 
have been many things which we could 
wish forgotten, yet many more which we 
should wish to be remembered for ever. 
Often, during its gloom, we called it 
" wearisome," and said, (i When shall I 
arise and the night be gone ? " (Job vii. 4.) 
Yet how much w r as there to reconcile us to 
it ; nay, to fill us with praise because of it ! 
It was then that the Lord drew near, and 
the world was displaced, and self was 
smitten, and our will conquered, and faith 
grew apace, and hope became brighter and 
more eager, and the things that are unseen 
were felt to be the real and the true : Jeru- 
salem that is above was seen by us as out 
proper home. 



THE MORNING. 43 

It was then that we had " songs in the 
night" (Psa. xlii. 8.) Our u reins in- 
structed us in the night seasons." (Psa. 
xvi. 7.) It was " in the night that we re- 
membered the name " of our God, (Psa. 
cxix. 55,) and " desired him with our 
souls " (Isa. xxvi. 9) ; " meditating on 
him in the /r/#/^-watches." (Psa. lxiii. 6.) 
It was " in the night " that " he led us 
with a light of fire." (Psa. lxxviii. 14.) 
It was in the night that " the dew lay 
upon our branch," (Job xxix. 19,) and 
with the dew there came down the manna; 
for the manna and the dew fell together, 
(Num. xi. 9,) so that out of the bosom of 
the darkness there came at once nourish- 
ment and freshness. It was then that we 
were taught sympathy with a groaning 
creation, taking part in its " earnest ex- 
pectation," and waiting for resurrection 
even as it is looking out for restitution ; it 
was then that we were taught to know our 
high office, as those who have the first- 



44 THE EARNESTS OP 

fruits of the Spirit, " to lead (as one has 
written) the choir of all-complaining na- 
ture ; " for it was then that the Spirit's 
power came forth upon us to tune the 
chords of our manifold being, that they 
might give forth the true note of mingled 
hope and sadness, peculiar to creation in its 
present low estate; and when we were 
fretting under the touch, and perhaps, with 
sentimental weakness, talking of broken 
strings and a blighted life, the hand of the 
great Master-tuner was upon us, giving to 
each rebellious chord its proper tension, 
that from the re- tuned instrument there 
might come forth that special harmony 
which he desires to draw from it in this 
present age — that special harmony by which 
he is to be glorified on earth, until Eden 
comes again and the wilderness blossoms 
as the rose.* 

* Thus even the philosophic German could express 
(he apostolic thought respecting creation, and give 
utterance to his sympathies : " When I stand all alone 
at night in open nature, I feel as though it were a spirit 



THE MORNING. 45 

It was then that we could make the 
utterance of Jacob's patient faith our own, 
u I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord ; " 
subscribing ourselves to our fellow saints 
as " your companion in tribulation and in 
the kingdom and patience of Christ " 
(that is, in patient waiting for his king- 
dom). It was then that these words of 
blessed cheer fell so sweetly on our ears, 
" He who testifieth these things saith, 
Surely I come quickly," drawing forth 
from our lips the glad response, " Even so, 
come, Lord Jesus." And it was then that, 
while learning thus to plead u make haste," 
we also learned to say with the Bride, 
" A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved 

and begged redemption of me. Often have I had the 
sensation as if nature, in wailing sadness, entreated 
something of me, so that, not to understand what she 
longed for, cut through my very heart.'* — Goethe, 
quoted by Olshausen on the Romans. And another has 
thus written : " Even in the things of the world around 
us there is an element of life, a yearning of what is 
bound, which, like that Memnon statue, unconsciously 
makes symphony when the ray touches it from above." 
Schfjbert, cited by the same. 



46 THE EARNESTS OF 

unto me, he shall lie all night in my 
bosom." (Sol. Song i. 13.) 

Blessed and profitable, however, as we 
have found the night with its still seclusion 
and solemn teachings, it is not the morn- 
ing nor the day. And its very darkness 
makes us long the more for the anticipated 
sun-rise — for u the flight of shadows and 
the eternal day-break." 

Nor are we hindered from desiring the 
day. Impatience is forbidden, but not de- 
sire. Let us possess our souls in patience, 
for he is neither the brave nor the believ- 
ing man who says, " Let me die, for the cup 
is bitterer than I can drink;" but he who 
under the sorest grief can say, " Let me 
live on and be useful, whatever may be the 
bitterness of the cup." But still we may 
long for the ending of the night. As in 
sickness we may long for health, and put 
forth all fit means for its attainment ; so in 
darkness we may cry earnestly for the 
dawning, especially because we know that 



THE MORNING. 47 

God has a day in store for us after the 
night is done — a day which is to be far 
more than a compensation for all previous 
sorrow. For every night God has pro- 
vided a morning, so that as we have many 
nights, we have also many mornings even 
here. They are not indeed " mornings 
without clouds/' but still they are morn- 
ings whose cheering light lifts up the 
heavy spirit and brightens the faded eye. 

But for the world, the children of the 
night, the heedless, pleasure-loving world, 
what morning is there, or what earnest of 
the morning? None. Or at least it de- 
serves not the name of morning. Their 
"sorrows are multiplied," because they have 
hastened after other gods. Their joy is but 
a moment. Their consolation is no better 
than a dream. They serve a god that can- 
not save, and that cannot comfort. Their 
portion here at the best is emptiness ; and 
the end is the eternal blackness and the 
infinite despair. The tidings of God's 



48 THE EARNESTS OF THE MORNING. 

free love they heed not ; but the tidings of 
his wrath they shall ere long be made to 
heed ; if now they turn not to him who is 
entreating of them this one favour, that 
they would bring" their sins to him for 
pardon, and let him bear all their griefs 
and carry all their sorrows. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE USE OF THESE EARNESTS. 

" Now for a swifter race ! " was the re* 
golve of one over whose path sorrow was 
beginning to darken heavily. " Now for 
a busier and more useful life ! " was the 
utterance of another, as he rose from his 
knees, after pouring out the bitterness of 
his grief into the ear of God. 

In these cases tribulation was taking its 
true course and working its right end. It 
had gone down to the most sacred depths 
of the renewed heart, and was calling up 
buried feelings of devotedness that had re* 
mained dormant, but not extinct, under a 
mass of worldliness. It smote our selfish- 
ness, our narrow-mindedness, our sloth, 



50 THE USE OP 

our flesh-pleasing, and reminded us that 
we had no time to loiter or to sleep. Tear- 
ing off the veil which prosperous days had 
flung over our eyes, it pointed to the vanity 
of things " seen and temporal/' till the 
vastness of the unseen and the eternal so 
grew upon us, that we rose up and went 
forth, resolving on a swifter race and a 
busier life on earth. 

Still there was a hinderance. The very 
trial that stirred us up also weighed us 
down, unknitting our strength, and caus- 
ing us well nigh to faint. The pressure 
staid our swiftness, and the deep wound, 
still bleeding, enfeebled us. We sought to 
run, but were often held back ; and when 
we would have gone forth to do the work 
of God, we were constrained to turn aside 
and go alone, that, in weeping and plead- 
ing, we might relieve our heavy hearts. We 
may at times seem to escape from the sor- 
row, and, in the fire of zeal, almost forget 
its bitterness ; yet it returns to us in full 



THESE EARNESTS. 51 

strength, and we feel as if a chain were on 
our limbs. There is not indeed the bond- 
age arising from any uncertainty as to the 
relationship in which we stand towards 
God. These fetters fell from us when we 
received God's record of forgiving love, and 
knew what it is to be freely pardoned. 
These fetters no amount of trial can re- 
impose on us, if " we hold the beginning 
of our confidence stedfast unto the end." 
Nay, it is often in a day of grief that we 
realize most blessedly how completely 
grace has set us free. But though there is 
no re-placement of our chains, and no bit- 
terness of bondage again tasted, still chas- 
tisement is u not joyous but grievous ; " and 
ts being grievous " it sometimes disheartens 
and disables us, so that we cannot do the 
same amount of service, or undergo the 
same degree of toil for God, as otherwise 
we might have done. At the first light- 
ing down of the stroke this is always felt, 
for we are men in the flesh, and the flesh 
p 2 



52 THE USE OF 

gives way. "The spirit truly is willing, 
but the flesh is weak." And for a con- 
siderable time this continues to be experi- 
enced ; shorter or longer, according to our 
natural characters, or according to the 
specialties of the trial. 

Hence it is that affliction is often 
more a season of preparation for service 
than a time of actual service, save only as 
patience is service, for " they also serve 
who only stand and wait." Let us not fret, 
then, nor be cast down, because we feel dis- 
abled for zealous service for a time. Let 
it suffice us to know that we are preparing 
for this. And when the load is lifted off 
or becomes lighter, then we run. with 
speedier foot, then we labour with fuller 
strength and freer heart. We cannot ex- 
pect to be wholly free from sorrow here, for 
some amount of trial is always needful to 
keep us from forgetting that tliis is not our 

rest, — that this is the night and not the 
day ; but still these intervals of calm and 



THESE EARNESTS. 53 

sunshine are precious times, — times of 
blessing ; times of service ; times for the 
swift race and the busy life. 

These mornings here, coming after the 
nights that thicken over us, are most 
profitable. They not only relieve the 
" o'er-fraught heart," but are seasons in 
which we find leisure to learn lessons of 
wisdom and holiness, which in the time of 
the sorrow we had overlooked or put from 
us. The returning elasticity of spirit en- 
ables us to rise from our depression, now 
that the weight has in some measure been 
lifted off. Too continuous a pressure of 
grief is apt to make us moody, selfish, 
desponding, slothful. It narrows the circle 
alike of vision and of sympathy, and dries 
up the springs of our nature. But when 
peace returns after a season of trouble, we 
seem doubly fitted as well as nerved for 
duty. The trial has sobered and mellowed 
us. It has taught us to endure hardness 
as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. It has 
f 3 



54 THE USE OF 

rubbed off excrescences. It has made us 
less selfish, less contracted in soul. It has 
taught us to look round with sympathy 
upon a suffering world and a weeping 
church. It was as if we had been taken 
aside for a season into some quiet nook or 
dark cave, from which, while alone and 
undistracted, we could look out unobserved 
upon the multitudes that passed and re- 
passed. And having been thus brought to 
form truer, riper judgments, we are led 
forth again to act — to act more unselfishly, 
more zealously, yet more stedfastly and 
soberly. 

Our life, after a night of trial has passed 
over us, should be a life of truer aims, of 
steadier walk, of higher level, of keener, 
purer vision. If not, we have suffered in 
vain. 

During the night, much was of necessity 
hidden from us. But the morning dis- 
closes what the night had hidden. It 
shows us how desperate the struggle was 



THESE EAENESTS. 55 

between us and our God, of which at the 
time we were hardly aware. It shows the 
amount of patience, love, and faithfulness, 
that have been expended on us by God. It 
shows the extent of the evil in us which 
had drawn down the chastening. It puts 
us in a position for bringing into practice 
the knowledge of the world's vanity and 
wretchedness which sorrow had taught us. 
Thus the morning carries out the lessons 
of the night, and gives us opportunity for 
exemplifying them. And thus the alterna- 
tion of trial and rest which makes up our 
lot on earth, is in truth but a succession of 
lessons, and of opportunities for practising 
them. " Day unto day uttereth speech, 
and night unto night showeth knowledge." 
(Psa. xix. 2.) 

Thus trial prepares for service. It nerves 
us, it braces us for toil. It show r s us what 
alone is worth living for, so that when the 
force of it is in some measure abated, w T e 
find ourselves ready to start anew for the 



56 THE USE OF 

race, ready to wield the weapons of our 
warfare with a firmer and more skilful 
hand. 

These intervals of brightness, then, are 
the true seasons for labour. These earnests 
of the morning should be prized as oppor- 
tunities specially afforded us by God for 
strenuous labour. If thus laid out, how 
blessed will they be found ! They are brief, 
for tribulation is our lot on earth, not 
ease ; but this should only arouse to new 
vigour ; for if they be thus brief, we have 
no moments to idle away. 

But it is here that so many stumble. In 
trial they call upon the Lord and vow their 
life to him. Through evil report and good 
they will follow him ; on the rough way 
or the smooth they will walk with him ; 
by labour, by sacrifice, by watchfulness, by 
costly gifts, they will prove their love, and 
zeal, and constancy ! Good words and sin- 
cerely spoken ! But so were the words of 
the disciple, " If I should die with thee, I 



THESE EARNESTS. 57 

will not deny thee in any wise." He 
spoke what he truly felt, but when the 
hour came, the resolution was not to be 
found. So with us. Trial calls forth 
many a high thought and prompts to noble 
purposes. Yet how seldom do these 
thoughts ripen ; how often do these pur- 
poses die ! Peace returns, sunshine bright- 
ens over us, our broken strength knits 
again, and we sink back into sloth ! The 
calm hour for which we longed, that we 
might do something for God, has come, 
but it finds us nearly as heedless and selfish 
as before we entered into the storm. 

This must not be. Why were we smit- 
ten, but just that we might be stirred up ? 
And why were we delivered, but just that 
we might work more strenuously, more 
efficaciously ? How sad, then, that both 
the trial and the enlargement should fail 
of their purposed end ! 

These times of enlargement are times of 
light and gladness. In these mornings 



58 THE USE OF THESE EARNESTS. 

joy has come to us. It is not the mere 
reaction from sorrow; it is not mere 
familiarity with suffering; it is not oblivion 
of the past; it is not the calm of over-spent 
feeling. It is joy from the Lord. And 
te the joy of the Lord is our strength." He 
who gave us the night has given us also 
the morning. He who called up the storm 
has brought back the calm. So that it is 
his joy in which we rejoice ; and this joy 
is our strength. Let not this strength lie 
idle. The calm will not last ; the clouds 
will soon return ; and it concerns us to lay 
out well the brief hour of light. " I must 
work the works of him that sent me while 
it is day ; the night cometh when no man 
can work." 



CHAPTEE V. 



THE MOKNING-STAR. 



It was " very early in the morning," 
while " it was yet dark/' that Jesus rose 
from the dead. Not the sun, but only the 
morning-star, shone upon his opening 
tomb. The shadows had not fled, the 
citizens of Jerusalem had not awoke. It 
was still night — the hour of sleep and of 
darkness, when he arose. Nor did his 
rising break the slumbers of the city. 

So it shall be il very early in the morn- 
ing," when " it is yet dark/ 5 and when 
nought but the morning- star is shining, 
that Christ's body, the church, shall arise. 
Like him, his saints shall awake when 
the children of the nis:ht and darkness 



60 THE MORKING-STAR. 

are still sleeping their sleep of death. In 
their arising they disturb no one. The 
world hears not the voice that summons 
them, or if it hears, shall only say, " It 
thunders," as did the unbelieving Jews 
when the Father's voice responded to the 
prayer of Jesus. (John xii. 29.) As Jesus 
laid them quietly to rest, each in his own 
still tomb, like children in the arms of 
their mother ; so, as quietly, as gently, 
shall he awake them when the hour ar- 
rives. 

He is the Morning-star. " I am the 
root and offspring of David, the bright and 
morning-star." (Rev. xxii. 16.) And this 
name is given to him not only because of 
the glory of his person and the brightness 
of his appearing, but because of the time 
when he is to appear. 

The first act, at his appearing, when he 
comes in glory, — the first indication of his 
arrival, while yet aloft "in the air," is 
likened to the shining of the morning-star. 



THE MORNING- STAR. 61 

Afterwards he shall come forth as " the 
Sun of righteousness/ 5 filling the whole 
earth with his brightness, and shadowing 
the nations with his healing wings (MaL 
iv. 2) ; but at first he shows himself as the 
Morning-star, — big with the hope of day,, 
yet not the day ; brighter than other stars 
and eclipsing all of them, yet not the Day- 
star; forerunner of the sun, yet not the 
sun; foreteller of the dawn, yet not the 
dawn.* 

Hence his promise to the conqueror is, 
" I will give him the morning-star " (Rev* 
ii. 28) ; that is, I will give myself to him 
as the morning-star ; I will show myself to 
him as such; I will confer on him this 
pre-eminence, this special blessedness. 

We read in Scripture of " the eye-lids of 

* " Fairest of stars, last in the train of night, 
If better thou belong not to the dawn : 
Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling morn 
With thy bright circlet, praise him in thy sphere, 
While day arises, that sweet hour of prime." 

Paradise Lost. Book V* 



62 THE MORNING- STAR. 

the morning;" and the morning-star i&r 
the first beam shooting from under these 
lids as they begin to re-open, that the eye 
of day may again irradiate the earth. It 
is only they who awake early that see the 
first opening of these eye-lids, or gaze upon 
the morning-star, or breathe the morning 
freshness, or taste the morning dew. So 
is it with those of whom it is said, " Bless- 
ed and holy is he that hath part in the 
first resurrection." To them come the 
quickening words, " Awake and sing, ye 
that dwell in dust." (Isa. xxvi. 19.) Into 
their tomb the earliest ray of glory finds its 
way. They drink in the first gleams of 
morning, while as yet the eastern clouds 
give but the faintest signs of its uprising. 
Its genial fragrance, its soothing stillness, 
its bracing freshness, its sweet loneliness, 
its quiet purity, all so solemn and yet so 
full of hope, these are theirs. Oh the 
contrast between these things and the dark 
night through which they have passed ! Oh 



THE MORNING-STAR. 63 

the contrast between these things and the 
grave from which they have sprung ! And 
as they shake off the encumbering turf, 
flinging mortality aside, and rising, in 
glorified bodies, to meet their Lord in the 
air, they are lighted and guided upward, 
along the untrodden pathway, by the beams 
of that Star of morning, which, like the 
star of Bethlehem, conducts them to the 
presence of the King. 

There seem to be more periods than one 
(if times so very brief may be called by 
that name) opening out upon us when the 
Lord comes. Just as there are more scenes 
than one, and more acts than one, in " the 
day of the Lord," so there are more periods 
than one. And it is interesting to notice 
these in connexion with the Morning- 
star. 

All the time up to the moment of his 
appearing is reckoned night. Then the 
scenes change, and, step by step, the day 
with its full sunshine is brought in. First, 

G 2 



64 THE MORNING-STAR. 

there is the period of the Morning-star, 
during which the dead saints awake and 
the living saints are changed; then that 
which is sown in corruption is raised in 
incorruption, that which is sown in dis- 
honour is raised in glory, that which is 
sown in weakness is raised in power, that 
which is sown a natural body is raised a 
spiritual body; and then they that have 
long dwelt in dust awake and sing. In 
every land they have found a grave, and 
every land now gives up the sleeping clay. 
They come forth " in the beauties of 
holiness from the womb of the morning," 
like the ten thousand times ten thousand 
dew-drops of the night, made visible by 
the morning-star, and sparkling to its far- 
coming glory. (Psa. ex. 3; Isa. xxvi. 19.) 
It is' long since " light was sown for the 
righteous," (Psa. xcvii. 11,) and this is the 
first-fruits of the harvest. 

Next there is the period of the twilight. 
This is the time when " the light shall not 



THE MORNING-STAR. 65 

be clear nor dark/' like " the morning 
spread upon the mountains." (Joel ii. 2.) 
Then has the last battle-strife begun ; then 
the Lord with his rod of iron is breaking 
his enemies in pieces like a potter's vessel ; 
then he cometh forth from his place to 
punish the inhabitants of the earth for 
their iniquity ; then, with all his saints, he 
executes the infinite vengeance, delivers 
Israel, destroys Antichrist, lays waste the 
world with sore calamity and purging fire. 
" Before the morning he is not," says the 
prophet, foretelling the ruin of the great 
enemy of Israel and the church. (Isa. 
xvii. 14.) * 

Next there is the morning. The enemy 
has disappeared ; each wreck that marked 

* It is either to this or the close of the preceding 
period that such passages are to be referred: " All the 
bright lights of heaven will I make dark over thee." 
Ezek. xxxii. 8. " The day of the Lord is darkness and 
not light." Amos v. 18, 20. " While ye look for light 
he turn it into the shadow of death." Jer. xiii. 15. 
" The light is darkened in the heavens thereof." Isa, 
Y.30. 

Q 3 



66 THE MORNING-STAR. 

either his , dominion or his destruction is 
gone. The face of the earth is renewed, 
the storm is laid to rest, and the glory of 
an unclouded sun and an unsullied firma- 
ment makes creation sing for joy. The 
voice of the Beloved is heard, " Rise up, my 
love, my fair one, and come away. For, 
lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and 
gone ; the flowers appear on the earth ; 
the time of the singing of birds is come, 
and the voice of the turtle is heard in our 
land ; the fig tree putteth forth her green 
figs, and the vines with the tender grape 
give a good smell. Arise, my love, my 
fair one, and come away." (Sol. Song ii. 
10—13.) 

Lastly, there is the day in its full 
brightness. For the path of this Just One 
is like the shining light that shineth more 
and more unto the perfect day. Of that 
day, earth has never seen the like. For 
that day it waits in patient hope, strug- 
gling hard, meanwhile, with darkness, and 



THE MORNING- STAR. 67 

labouring to throw off its long sad weight 
of ill. 

It is as if the glory of the Lord, when 
first coming within sight of the earthy 
showed itself in the far distance, as the 
star of morning ; token most welcome and 
hopeful, recognised at once by those who 
knew the true light of the world, and who 
had often in other days looked out wist- 
fully for the Star of Jacob. It is, next, as 
if the same glory, when it neared the earth, 
showed itself in terrible majesty as the 
sign of the Son of man, in seeing which all 
the tribes of the earth mourn (Matt. xxiv. 
30 ; Rev. i. 7) ; for just as in the morning- 
watch the Lord looked through the pillar 
of fire and cloud and troubled the host of 
the Egyptians, (Exod. xiv. 24,) so, when he 
cometh with clouds, " all kindreds of the 
earth shall wail because of him." It is, 
next, as if the same glory of the Son of man, 
coming still nearer, took up its destined 
position, and spread its skirts over earth as 



68 THE MORNING-STAR. 

did the pillar-cloud over the tents of Israel. 
It is, lastly, as if this glory, this more than 
Shechinah-splendour, showed itself as the 
Sun of righteousness, bearing healing in 
his wings, wherewith he heals the nations, 
so that the inhabitant shall no more say, I 
am sick ; wherewith he heals the earth, so 
that the curse takes flight ; wherewith he 
heals the air, so that it poisons no more. 
Then day shall utter speech to day in a 
way unheard of before ; then shall their 
line go throughout all the earth, and their 
words to the end of the world, when out of 
that " tabernacle which he hath set for the 
Sun/' that Sun shall come forth as a bride- 
groom out of his chamber, rejoicing as a 
strong man to run a race. Then shall 
come to pass the saying that is written, 
* Behold, the glory of the God of Israel 
came from the way of the east, and his 
voice was like the noise of many waters, 

and THE EARTH SHINED WITH HIS GLORY*'* 

(Ezek. xliii. 2.) 



THE MORNING-STAR. 69 

With all of these in succession the saints 
have to do, from the time that they are 
roused out of their tombs by the first 
beams of the Morning-star, to have part in 
the first resurrection. But it is only th@ 
first of these that we are now considering. 

The promise " to him that overcometh " 
is, " I will give him the morning-star. 39 
(Rev. ii. 28.) Of all the blessings symbol- 
ized or indicated by that star, he is made 
partaker. The first streak of dawn is his. 
He is summoned from the dust to meet 
morning ere yet one ray of it has touched 
the earth. The first glimpse of the long- 
waited-for glory his eye shall see, when 
other eyes abide in darkness. In this first 
token of a coming Lord, his soul shall re- 
joice. At this, the first sound of the return- 
ing Bridegroom's voice, he shall go forth 
with ready love. The first object that 
shall meet his eye on awaking from the 
tomb, shall be the Star of Jacob. 

This earnest of creation's better day 



70 THE MORNING-STAR. 

is the portion of the saints. The deliver- 
ance of creation is at hand. The time of 
" the manifestation of the sons of God " is 
come. Now, arrayed in light, themselves 
the sons of light, they shall shine as the 
brightness of the firmament and as the 
stars for ever and ever. Now, transformed 
into the image of the Morning-star — them- 
selves the stars of morning, they prepare 
to sing together over the new creation, 
when its foundations shall be fastened and 
its corner-stone laid by Him who is to 
make all things new.* Death is now 
swallowed up of victory; the grave is 
rifled ; the spoiler is spoiled ; ashes are 
exchanged for beauty : the light that was 
quenched is rekindled ; the sorrow passes 
into joy ; and the darkness of a brief night 
ends in the uprising of the endless day. 

As for those that " are alive and remain 
unto the coming of the Lord," though they 

* See Job xxxviii. 6, 7, where the reference is of 
course to the old creation. 



THE MORNING-STAR. 71 

shall not go before those that are asleep, yet 
they shall not be behind them in the bless- 
edness. They shall have the same privileges 
of the early morning, — the same honour, 
the same glory. Their eye shall look upon 
that Star ; and it shall be to them all that 
it is to those who were " dwelling in dust." 
Living in the last days of a God-denying 
world, — days dark and hateful as those of 
Noah or of Lot, — their righteous souls 
vexed from day to day with wickedness 
" that cannot rest," " casting up its mire 
and dirt " on every side, — danger pressing, 
conflict thickening, persecution assailing, 
sorrows multiplying, — how welcome shall 
that sign be to them, springing up like 
hope when all is hopeless, and fore-token- 
ing life, refreshment, rest, gladness, to the 
troubled and despairing earth ! 

Like the anxious watchman on some 
fortress, they have been wearying for the 
morning ; and it has come at last ! Like 



V2 THE MOltNING-STAS. 

the belated traveller, pressing on over nil! 
and moor and rock and waste and thicket., 
they have been seeking at every turn to 
catch the light of their cottage window ; 
and it is seen at last ! Like the tempest- 
tost apostle, when neither sun nor stars for 
many days appeared, " they wish for day." 
and are glad beyond measure at the tokens 
of its approach. The glimmer of the light- 
house has hitherto been their comfort and 
their guide. By it they have shaped their 
way and cheered their hearts. But, of a 
sudden, the beacon seems to sink away, 
and ere they are aware, its light is lost 
amid the far-outrivalling brightness of the 
Morning- star. 

But upon the unready and unwatching 
world that Star rises* with no ray of bless- 
ing. It rises only to shed " disastrous 
blight/' and give token of the desolations 
that are at hand. For as when Noah en- 
tered the ark the flood burst forth, or as 



THE MORNING -STAR. 73 

when Lot entered Zoar the fire came 
down, so when the saints are caught up 
then the wrath is poured out and the door 
is shut. 

Till then the gate of peace stands wide 
open, and into the chambers of safety all 
are beckoned. The most unready of all the 
children of men may go freely in ; for the 
grace that invites makes no exceptions, but 
welcomes the unworthiest. It would fain 
allure the seekers of vain joy, from joys 
that are so vain. It would fain win the 
heart of the sorrowful, who mourn and yet 
have no comforter, because they have no 
God. It would fain draw in the secure 
into a place of true safety, ere the storm 
arise that is to break in pieces the strong 
foundations of the earth. 

Children of the earth ! — you especially 
whose sorrows are multiplied, and whose 
hearts are sick with disappointment, — give 
heed to the gracious warning. Enter the 



74 THE MORNING- STAR. 

hiding-place and be safe for ever. Thrice 
blessed are those griefs and disappoint- 
ments that lead you out of lying refuges 
into the sure covert from the storm, that 
call you from the joy of the world into the 
joy of God. 



CHAPTER VL 

THE MORNING. 

* Th e watchman said, The morning 
cometh" (Isa. xxi. 12); and though, while 
making this answer, he forewarns us of 
night, he also assures us of morning. There 
is a morning, says he, therefore do not give 
way to faintness of spirit ; but there is a 
night between, therefore take warning : 
that you may not be surprised nor dismay- 
ed, as if the promise were broken, or some 
strange thing allowed to befall you. 

There may be delay, he intimates, be- 
fore the morning, — a dark delay, for which 
we should be prepared. During this he 
calls to watchfulness : for the length of the 
night Is hidden, the time of day-break is 

n 2 



76 THE MORNING. 

left uncertain. We must be on the out- 
look, with cur eyes fixed on the eastern 
hills. We have nothing wherewith to 
measure the hours, save the sorrows of the 
church and the failing of hearts. 

During this delay the watchman en- 
courages us to " inquire/' to " return/' to 
" come." He expects us to ask " how 
long," and say, " When will the night be 
done?" He takes for granted that such 
will be the proceeding of men who really 
long for morning. To the hills of Seir 
they will again and again return, to learn 
from the watchman what is the promise of 
day. For no familiarity with the night can 
ever reconcile them to its darkness, or 
make morning less desirable and welcome. 

It is right for us to desire the morning, 
to hope for it, to weary for it, to inquire as 
to the signs of it hour after hour. God 
has set this joy before us, and it were 
strange indeed if, when compassed about 
with so many sorrows, we could forget it, 



THE MORNING. 77 

or be heedless as to its arrival. For the 
coming of the morning is the coming of Him 
whom we long to see. It is the coming of 
Him " who turneth the shadow of death 
into the morning." (Amos v. 8.) It is the 
return of Him whose absence has been 
night, and whose presence will be day. It 
is the return of Him who is the resurrec- 
tion and the life, and who brings resur- 
rection with Him ; the return of Him who 
is creation's Lord, and who brings with 
Him deliverance to creation ; the return 
of Him who is the church's Head, and 
who brings with Him triumph and glad- 
ness to his church. 

All the joy, the calm, the revivifying 
freshness of the morning are wrapt up in 
Him. When He appears, day appears, 
life appears, fruitfulness appears. The curse 
departs. The " bondage of corruption " is 
no more. Clouds, storms, troubles, sorrows 
vanish. The face of nature reassumes the 
smile of unfallen times. It is earth's fes- 
h 3" 



78 THE MORNING. 

tival, the world's jubilee. " The heavens re- 
joice, the earth is glad ? the sea roars and the 
fulness thereof, the fields are joyful and all 
that is therein, the trees of the wood re- 
joice, the floods clap their hands, and the 
hills are joyful together before the Lord; 
for He has come, for He has come to judge 
the earth ; with righteousness shall he 
judge the world, and the people with his 
truth." (Psa. xevi. 11 ; xcviii. 7.) 

This morning has been long anticipated, 
Age after age it has attracted the church's 
eye, and fixed her hope. On the promise 
of it her faith has been resting, and towards 
the hastening of it her prayers have gone 
forth. Though afar off, it has been de- 
scried, and rejoiced in as the sure consum- 
mation towards which all things are moving 
forward according to the Father's purpose. 
" There is a morning " has been the word 
of consolation brought home to the bur- 
dened heart of many a saint when ready to 
say, with David, " I am -desolate/' or with 



THE MORNING. 79 

Jeremiah, " He hath set me in dark places 
as they that be dead of old." 

Let us dwell for a little on some of these 
Old Testament allusions to the morning. 
Let us take first the 30th Psalm. 

David had been in sorrow, and in com- 
ing out of it he makes known to the saints 
his consolations : — " Sing unto the Lord, 
O ye saints of his, and give thanks at the 
remembrance of his holiness. For there is 
but a moment in his anger ; in his favour is 
life; weeping may endure for a night, but joy 

COMETH IN THE MORNING." (Psa. XXX. 4,5.) 

The earnest of that morning he had already 
tasted, but the morning itself he anticipates. 
Then joy has come. Then he can say, 
(verse 11,) " Thou hast turned for me my 
mourning into dancing : thou hast put off 
my sackcloth, and girded me with glad- 
ness." But it is the voice of a greater than 
David that is heard in this Psalm. It is 
one of Christ's resurrection Psalms, like 
the 18th and the 116th. He was "lifted 



80 THE MORNING, 

up," so that his foes were not made to re- 
joice over him. He cried, and was " healed." 
His " soul was brought up from the grave." 
There was anger against Him " for a mo- 
ment," when as the sinner's substitute he 
bore the sinner's curse. But in Jehovah's 
favour there was " life." He had a night of 
weeping, a night of " strong crying and 
tears," when his soul was " sorrowful even 
unto death," and when beneath the waves 
of that sorrow he sunk, commending his 
spirit into the Father's hands. But it was 
a night no more. Morning came, and with 
morning, joy. Coming forth from the tomb, 
he left all his sorrow behind : his sackcloth 
was put off, and he arose " girded with 
gladness." He found morning and joy ; 
and he is " the first-fruits of them that 
slept." His rising was the rising of his 
Baints. There was a morning for him, 
therefore there shall be one for us, — a 
morning bright with resurrection -glory. 
Let us next take Psalm forty-ninth. 



THE MORNING. 8l 

These are Christ's words, as is proved from 
the quotation of verse 4th in Matt. xiii. 
85. He summons the whole world to listen. 
He " speaks of wisdom," for he is Wisdom. 
He points to the vanity of riches, and 
their insufficiency to redeem a soul; and 
who knew so well as he what a ransom 
was needed ? He sees men going on in 
their wickedness, self-confidence, and vain- 
glory. He proclaims their madness and 
guilt, — speaking of them as incurable from 
generation to generation. He contrasts 
the end of the wicked and the end of 
the righteous ; ■■' like sheep the former are 
laid in the grave," — buried out of sight, 
forgotten, unmourned. " Over them the 
righteous shall have dominion in the 
morning." The morning then brings do- 
minion to the righteous, — redemption from 
the power of the grave. In this Jesus re- 
joiced ; in this let us rejoice. This joy of 
the morning was set before him ; it is the 
same joy that is set before us. Dominion 



82 THE MORNING. 

in the morning is that to which we look 
forward, — a share in the first resurrection, 
of which they who are partakers live and 
reign with Christ. 

Look again at the forty-sixth Psalm. It 
is the utterance of the faith of Israel's 
faithful ones, in the time of " Jacob's 
trouble." The earth is shaken (verse £, 
compared with Haggai ii. 6 ; and Heb. 
xii. 26, 27) ; the sea and the waves roar 
(ver. 3, comp. with Luke xxi. 25) : but 
there is a river whose streams gladden 
them. God is in the midst of her. Nay, 
" God helps her when the morning ap- 
peareth," (ver. 5, margin,) just as in the 
morning ivatch he looked out from the 
fiery cloud and troubled the Egyptians. 
Then the heathen are scattered at his 
voice, — he sweeps off every enemy, he 
makes wars to cease, and sets himself on 
high over the nations, as King of kings, 
" exalted in the earth." From which we 
gather that the morning brings with it de- 



THE MORNING. 83 

liverance from danger, — victory over ene- 
mies, — the renewal of the earth, — peace to 
the nations, — the establishment of Mes- 
siah's glorious throne. What a morning 
of joy must that he, for the church, for 
Israel, for the whole earth ! — resurrection 
for the church, restoration for Israel, re- 
titution for the earth ! 

Look at the 110th Psalm. We see Jesus 
at Jehovah's right hand, — waiting till his 
enemies be made his footstool ; and then 
He who said unto him " Sit," shall say 
" Arise." (Psa. lxxxii. 8.) He is yet to 
have dominion on earth, and to sit upon 
the throne of his father David. Instead 
of " a gainsaying people," as he had in the 
day of his weakness, he is to have " a will- 
ing people in the day of his power;" all 
arrayed in the beauties of holiness ; more 
numerous and resplendent than the dew 
from the womb of the morning. Willing- 
ness, beauty, holiness, brightness, num- 
ber; — these shall mark his people in that 



84 THE MORNING. 

morning of joy which his coming shall 
produce. " The dew (says one) is de- 
posited in greatest plenty about the break- 
ing of the dawn, and refresheth with its 
numerous drops the leaves and plants and 
blades of grass on which it resteth ; so 
shall the saints of God, coming forth from 
their invisible abodes out of the womb of 
the morning, refresh the world with their 
benignant influence; and therefore are they 
likened to the dew, for all nature is so 
constituted of God, as to bear witness of 
that day of regeneration which then shall 
dawn. 55 * 

Read also " the last words of David/ 5 
(2 Sam. xxiii. 1—4,) in which, as in the 
72nd Psalm, " the prayers of David are 
ended, 55 or summed up. " There shall be 
a just one ruling over men, ruling in the 
fear of God ; as the light of the morn- 

* It is interesting to notice, that while David speaks 
of " the womb of the morning " in connexion with the 
dew, Job asks, " Who hath begotten the drops of dew ? 
out of whose womb came the ice?" Job xxxviii. 28. 



THE MORNING, 85 

ING shall he arise, the Sun of an uncloud- 
ed morning, shining after rain upon the 
tender grass of the earth." Not till that 
Just One comes is the morning to dawn, for 
he is its light ; and from his countenance 
is to "break forth that light in which all 
earth is to rejoice. Then the darkness of 
the long night shall disappear, and the 
brief tribulation tasted in the time of ab- 
sence be forgotten in the abounding blessed- 
ness of his everlasting presence. 

Let us hear how, in " the Song," the 
bride refers to this same morning. She 
rejoices in the Bridegroom's assured love, 
and her desires or longings are not ques- 
tionings as to the relationship in which 
she stands to him. This is with her a set- 
tled thing, for she has tasted that the Lord 
is gracious. " I am my beloved's, and my 
beloved is mine." What direction then do* 
her longings take ? Her " eyes are towards 
the hills," over which she expects to be- 
hold him coming like a roe. Thus she 
i 



86 THE MORNING. 

pleads with him not to tarry; "Make 
haste, my beloved, and be thou like to a 
roe, or to a young hart upon the mountains 
of spices." (viii. 14.) Thus also she an- 
ticipates the morning of fuller joy, even 
while enjoying present fellowship ; " He 
feedeth among the lilies until the day 
break and the shadows flee away." (ii. 16, 
17.) And thus the Bridegroom himself, 
feeling, if one may so speak, the loneliness 
of the night, and that it is " not good to 
be alone," longs, like herself, for day, and 
resolves to climb the hills, where he may 
not only be regaled with freshest odours, 
but may catch the earliest gleam of dawn : 
" Until the day break, and the shadows 
flee away, I will get me to the mountain of 
myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense." 
(iv. 6.) On that hill let us meet him in 
faith, and watch with him in hope, yet 
ever remembering, that though this joy 
which faith gives here is unspeakably 
comforting, it is not the gladness of the 



THE MORNING. 87 

marriage supper, — it is not the blessedness 
of the bridal day. For he himself, while 
telling his disciples, " Lo, I am with you 
always/' says also this, " I will not hence- 
forth drink of this fruit of the vine until 
the day that I shall drink it new with you 
in my Father's kingdom." (Matt. xxvi. 
29.) 

Thus we see all kinds of joy brought 
within the circle of this morning. It is a 
morning of joy, because it is the morning 
introduced by Him, who said, cc These 
things have I spoken unto you, that my 
joy might remain in you, and that your joy 
might be full " (John xv. 11) ; by Him " in 
whose presence there is fulness of joy, and 
at whose right hand there are pleasures for 
evermore." (Psa. xvi. 11.) But let us 
mark the different kinds of joy and the 
different figures denoting it. 

There is the joy of deliverance from 
overwhelming danger. This was the joy 
of the Jews when their adversary perished, 
i 2 



88 THE MORNING. 

and Mordecai was exalted ; " The Jews had 
light, and gladness, and joy, and honour, 
.... the Jews had joy and gladness, a feast 
and a good day. 5 ' (Esther viii. 16.) Such 
shall be the church's joy in the morning of 
her great deliverance. There is the joy of 
escape from captivity and return from exile, 
such as made Israel feel " as men that 
dream." Such shall be the church's joy 
when her long captivity is done. (i Then 
shall her mouth be filled with laughter, 
and her tongue with singing ; having sowed 
in tears she reaps in joy." (Psa. cxxvi. 2.) 
There is the joy of harvest (Isa. ix. 3) ; and 
such shall be the church's joy. There is 
the mother's joy when her pangs are over, 
and the child is born into the world. (John 
xvi. 20.) With such joy shall we rejoice, 
and our joy no man taketh from us. The 
joy in reserve for us is manifold and large ; 
it will abide and satisfy ; it is the joy of 
the morning ; — a long glad day before us ; 
no evening with its lengthening shadows, 



THE MORNING. 89 

no night with its chills and darkness. 
" There shall be no night there, and 
they need no candle neither light of the 
sun, for the Lord God giveth them light, 
and they shall reign for ever and ever." 
(Rev. xxii. 5.) 

The prospect of this morning — this 
" morning of joy " — nerves and cheers u-s 
under all our tribulation. Were this morn- 
ing an uncertainty, how dark would the 
night seem ! how difficult for us to fight 
against faintness and despair ! But the 
thought of morning invigorates and braces 
us. We can set our faces to the storm, for 
behind it lies the calm. We can bear the 
parting, for the meeting is not distant. 
We can afford to weep, for the tear shall 
soon be wiped away. We can watch the 
tedious sick bed, for soon " the inhabitant 
shall not say, I am sick." We can look 
quietly into the grave of buried love and 
cherished hope, for resurrection shines be- 
yond it. Things may be against us here, 
i 3 



90 THE MORNING. 

but they are for us hereafter. The here is 
but an hour ; the hereafter is a whole 
eternity. 

But for the world — the heedless, plea- 
sure-chasing world, they have no such 
brightenings for their dark hours of sor- 
row. No morning comes to them. Their 
sun sets, but rises not again: their life 
goes down in darkness, without a hope. 
It is night — night infinite and endless, to 
them ; " the blackness of darkness for 
ever!" No healing of their wounds, no 
wiping away of their tears, no binding up 
of their broken hearts ! They reject the in- 
finite sacrifice, they sport away their day 
of salvation, and their history winds up in 
judgment and the second death. " If they 
speak not according to this word" (says 
the prophet,) " there is no morning for 
them" (Isa. viii. 20, margin.) This word, 
" which by the gospel is preached unto 
them," (1 Peter i. 25,) they slight or scorn, 
and vengeance overtakes them for rejec- 



THE MORNING. 91 

tion ! " Therefore/' says the same prophet, 
"' shall evil come upon you ; thou shalt not 
know its morning" (Isa. xlvii. 11, margin.) 
An evil without a deliverance, a night 
without a morning, is their portion ! 

Sad closing of a life-time's weariness! 
Joy they have never known, though its full 
cup has often been handed to them by 
God, and they pressed to drink it ! For 
what is each message, each summons, each 
warning, but God saying to them, " Come 
share my love, come taste my joy ! " Sor- 
row they have known, for how could they 
miss knowing it in such a world ! Heavy 
burdens, keen griefs, sharp stings, bitter 
memories, hard misgivings, intolerable 
forebodings, dark self-questionings, " What 
am I, or what shall I be?" all these, 
crowding in upon a soul that has no God, 
pouring into a heart that has no outlet for 
its sorrows in the bosom of a Saviour, are 
enough to dry up life's springs even when 



92 THE MORNING. 

deepest * Yet all these are but the be- 
ginning of sorrows ! There is a fuller cup 
yet to be given to them to drink — eternal 
wormwood! Then the heart would fain 
break, but cannot. . For the sorrow is as 
eternal as it is infinite. They shall seek 
for death, but shall not be able to find it ; 
for the second death is the death that 
never dies. 

* Goethe, the world's favourite, if one may so speak, 
confessed when about eighty years old, that he could 
not remember being in a really happy state of mind 
even for a few weeks together ; and that when he 
wished to feel comfortable he had to veil his self- 
consciousness ! And the following is the closing sen- 
tence of his self-biography : " Child ! child ! no more. 
The coursers of time, lashed, as it were, by invisible 
spirits, hurry on the light car of our destiny ; and all 
that we can do, is in cool self-possession to hold the 
reins with a firm hand, and to guide the wheels, now to 
the left, now to the right, a stone here, a precipice 
there. Whither it is hurrying who can tell? And who 
indeed can remember the point from which it started ? " 
Alas ! for the poor world, that, with all its refinement 
and poetry and philosophy, knows not whither it is 
hurrying ! As if no voice (more than man's) had ever 
said, " I am the way, and the truth, and the life." 



CHAPTER VH 

THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 

The issue of the conflict between the 
saints and death was decided when the 
Lord arose. He met the enemy on his own 
territory, his own battle-field, and over- 
came. He entered the palace of the king 
of terrors, and there laid hold of the strong 
man, shaking his dwelling to its founda- 
tions as he came forth, carrying away its 
gates along with him, and giving warning 
of being about to return, in order to 
complete his conquest by " spoiling his 
goods," and robbing him of the treasures 
which he had kept so long, — the dust of 
sleeping saints. 

The first act of spoiling the strong man 



94 THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 

of his goods begins at the resurrection. Of 
this we have already spoken generally; 
but the subject is so largely dwelt upon in 
Scripture, that something more special is 
needed. For it is a hope so fruitful in con- 
solation to us who are still sojourners in a 
dying world like this, and yet so little 
prized, that we must not pass it slightly by. 
Let us look at it in the aspects in which 
the apostle spreads it out before us in the 
15th of his first Epistle to the Corinthians. 
The vision which he there holds before 
us, is one of glory and joy. It is a morning 
landscape, and contrasts brightly with pre- 
sent night and sorrow. It draws aside the 
veil that hides from view our much-longed- 
for heritage, showing us from our prospect- 
hill the excellence of the land that shall so 
soon be ours, — plains richer than Sharon, 
valleys more fruitful than Sibmah, moun- 
tains goodlier than Carmel or Lebanon. 
The then and the now, the there and the 
here, are strangely diverse. Here the mor- 



THE VICTORY OYEK DEATH. 95 

tal, there the immortal ; here the corrupt- 
ible, there the incorruptible ; here the 
earthly, there the heavenly; here the do- 
minion of death, there death swallowed up 
of victory ; here the grave devouring its 
prey, there the spoiler of the grave coming 
forth in resurrection-power, to claim each 
particle of holy dust, undoing death's handi- 
work, spoiling the spoiler, bringing forth in 
beauty that which had been laid down in 
vileness, clothing with honour that which 
had been sown in shame. 

" The trumpet shall sound, the dead 
shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall 
be changed ! " All this " in a moment, in 
the twinkling of an eye." Other changes are 
gradual, this sudden. There is the ebbing 
and the flowing; there is the growing up in- 
to manhood, and the growing down into old 
age ; there is the slow opening of spring into 
summer, and of summer into autumn ; but 
this shall be unlike all these changes. It 
shall be instantaneous, — like the lightning's 



96 THE VICTORY OVER DEATH* 

flash, or the twinkling of an eye. He who 
spake and it was done, shall speak again, 
and it shall be done ; he who said, Let there 
be light, and there was light, shall speak, 
and light shall come forth out of the grave's 
thick darkness. 

" This corruptible shall put on incorrup- 
tion ! " There will be an entire casting 
aside of mortality with all its wrappings of 
corruption, with all its relics of dishonour. 
Every particle of evil shall be shaken out 
of us, and " this vile body " transfigured 
into the likeness of the Lord's own glo- 
rious body. We entered this world mortal 
and corruptible; all our life long we are 
imbibing mortality and corruption, becom- 
ing more and more thoroughly mortal and 
corruptible ; the grave sets its seal to all 
this, and crumbles us down into common 
earth. But the trumpet sounds, and all this 
is gone. Mortality falls off, and all per- 
taining to it is left behind. No more of 
dross or disease in our frame. We can then 



THE YICTORar OYER DEaTH. 97 

defy sickness, and pain, and death. We 
can say to our bodies, be pained no more ; 
to our limbs, be weary no more; to oui 
lips, be parched no more ; to our eye, be 
dim no more. 

" O death, where is thy sting?" He 
that hath the power of death is the devil, the 
old serpent, and he torments us here. Sin 
gave him his sting, and the law gave sin 
its strength ; but now that sin has been 
forgiven and the law magnified, the sting 
is plucked out. The stinging begins with 
our birth; for life throughout is one un* 
ceasing battle with death, until, for a season, 
death conquers, and we fall beneath his 
power. But the prey shall be taken from 
the mighty and his victims rescued for 
ever. Now sin has passed away, and what 
has become of death's sting, — its sharpness, 
its pain, its power to kill ? It cannot touch 
the immortal and the incorruptible ! 

" O grave, where is now thy victory ? n 
A. conqueror all along hast thou been,— 



98 THE VICTORY OYER DEATH. 

never yet baffled, — thy course one perpe- 
tual triumph, — >the ally of death, following 
in his footsteps; not only smiting down the 
victim, but devouring it, taking it into thy 
den, and consuming it bone by bone, till 
every particle is crumbled into dust, as if 
to make victory so sure that a retrieval of it 
would be absolutely impossible. Yet thy 
victories are over; the tide of battle is 
turned in the twinkling of an eye. Look 
at these rising myriads, — thou canst hold 
them no longer : thou thoughtest them thy 
prey, when they were but given to keep 
for a little moment. See these holy ones, 
without one spot, not one stain on which thy 
sting, O death, can fasten ; not a weakness, 
which might encourage thee again to hope 
for a second victory ! All thy doings of six 
thousand years undone in a moment ! Not 
a scar remaining from all thy many wounds; 
not a trace, or disfigurement, or blot, — all 
perfection, — eternal beauty ! And look at 
these other holy ones, also glorified ! They 



THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 99 

have not tasted death, nor passed down 
into the grave. Over them thou hast had 
no power. Thou hast waged war with 
them in vain. They have seen no corrup- 
tion, and they remain monuments that 
thou wert not invincible. They have de- 
fied thy power, and now they are beyond 
thy reach ! 

Ah, this is victory ! It is not escaping 
by stealth out of the hands of the enemy, 
it is conquering him ! It is not bribing him 
to let us go; it is open and triumphant 
victory, — victory which not only routs and 
disgraces the enemy, but swallows him up, 
— victory achieved in righteousness, and in 
behalf of these who had once been " law- 
ful captives." 

And the victor, who is he ? Not w r e, but 
our Brother-king. His sword smote the 
mighty one, and under his shield we have 
come off conquerors. The wreath is his of 
victorious battle, not ours ; we are the tro- 
phies, not the conquerors. He overcame. 
k 2 



100 THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 

How? By allowing himself to be overcome! 
He plucked the sting from death. How ? 
By allowing it to pierce himself ! He made 
the grave to let go its hold. How ? By 
going down into its precincts and wrestling 
with it in the greatness of his strength. He 
brought round the law which was against 
us to be upon our side. How ? By giving 
the law all that it sought, so that it could 
ask no more either of him or of us. 

How complete the victory over us seem- 
ed for a while to be ! yet how complete the 
reversal ! These enemies are not only con- 
quered, but more than conquered. No 
trace of their former conquests remains. 
We not only live, but are made immortal. 
We not only are rescued from the corrup- 
tion of the grave, but made incorruptible 
for ever. 

Victory, then, is our watchword. We 
entered on the conflict at first, assured of 
final victory by Him who said, " I am the 
resurrection and the life ; he that belie veth 



THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 101 

on me, though he were dead yet shall he live, 
and whosoever liveth and believeth on me 
shall never die; 9 ' — by Him who to all his 
many promises of spiritual life and blessing 
added this, " and I will raise him up at 
the last day." When taking up sword and 
shield, we were sure of success; we could 
boast when putting on the harness as he 
that putteth it off in triumph. Victory was 
our watchword during every conflict, even 
the hardest and the sorest. Victory was 
our watchword on the bed of death, in the 
dark valley, when going down for a sea- 
son into the tomb. Victory is to be our 
final watchword when re-appearing from 
the grave, leaving mortality beneath us, 
and ascending to glory. 

"Then shall Jehovah God wipe away 
tears from off all faces." (Isa. xxv. 8; xxx. 
19; xxxv. 10; lx. 20; Jer. xxxi. 12; 
Rev. vii. 17 ; xxi. 4.) We shall weep no 
more. The furrows of past tears are effaced. 
Tears of anguish, tears of parting, tears of 

K 3 



102 THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 

bereavement, tears of adversity, tears of 
heart-breaking sorrow, these are forgotten. 
We cannot weep again. The fountain of 
tears is dried up. God our Lord wipes 
off the tears. It is not time that heals the 
sorrows of the saints, or dries up their tears ; 
it is God; God himself; God alone. He 
reserves this for himself, as if it were his 
special joy. The world's only refuge in 
grief is time, or pleasure ; but the refuge of 
the saints is God. This is the true heal- 
ing of the wound ; and the assurance to us 
that tears once wiped away by God cannot 
flow again. 

" The rebuke of his people shall he take 
away from off all the earth." (Isa. xxv. 8.) 
As he is to do this for Israel, so also for the 
church. Rebuke, reproach, persecution, 
have been the church's lot on earth. The 
world hated the Master, and they have 
hated the servant. The " reproach of 
Christ," (Heb. xi.,) is a well-known re- 
proach. Shame for his name is what his 



THE VICTORY OYER DEATH. 103 

saints have been enduring, and shall en- 
dure until he comes again. But all this 
is to be reversed. Soon the world's taunt 
shall cease. They shall scorn no more j 
they shall hate no more ; they shall revile 
no more, and no more cast out our names 
as evil. Honour crowns the saints, and 
their enemies are put to shame. It is but 
one day's reviling before men, and then an 
eternity of glory in the presence of God 
and of the Lamb. Then the name of saint 
shall be a name of glory, both in earth 
and heaven. 

Why shrink then from the world's re- 
proach, when it is but a breath at the 
most, and when we know that it so soon 
shall cease ? Why not rejoice that we are 
counted worthy to sufTer shame for the 
name of Jesus, when we know that all that 
afflicts us here is not worthy to be compared 
with the glory that shall be revealed in 
us ? The morning, and the glory which the 
morning brings with it, will more than com- 



104 THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 

pensate for all. Let us be of good cheer 
then, and press onward, through evil re- 
port as well as through good, having 
respect unto the recompence of reward. 

" Creation shall be delivered from the 
bondage of corruption into the glorious 
liberty of the sons of God." That morn- 
ing which brings resurrection to us brings 
restitution to creation — deliverance to a 
groaning earth. The same Lord that 
brings us out of the tomb, rolls back the 
curse from off creation, effacing the vestiges 
of the first Adam's sin, and presenting a 
fresh memorial of the second Adam's 
righteousness. Happy world ! when Satan 
is bound, when the curse is obliterated, 
when the bondage is broken, when the air 
is purged, when the soil is cleansed, when 
the grave is emptied, and when the risen 
saints take the throne of creation to rule 
in righteousness with the sceptre of the 
righteous King. 

Resurrection is our hope ; our hope in 



THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 105 

life, our hope in death. It is a purifying 
hope. It is a gladdening hope. It com- 
forts us when laying in the grave the clay 
of those whom w T e have loved. It cheers 
us when feeling the weakness of our own 
frame, and thinking how soon we shall lie 
down in dust. It refreshes and elevates 
when we remember how much precious 
dust earth has received since the day of 
righteous Abel. How sweet that name — 
resurrection ! It pours life into each 
vein and vigour into each nerve at the 
very mention of it ! 

It is not carnal thus to bend over the 
clay- cold corpse and long for the time when 
these very limbs shall move again ; w r hen 
that hand shall clasp ours as of old ; when 
those eyes shall brighten ; when those lips 
shall resume their suspended utterance ; 
when we shall feel the throbbings of that 
heart again ! No. it is scriptural, it is 
spiritual. Some may call it sentimental; 
but it is our very nature. We cannot feel 



106 THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 

otherwise, even if we would. We cannot 
but love the clay. We cannot but be loth 
to part with it. We cannot but desire its 
reanimation. The nature that God has 
given us can be satisfied with nothing less. 
And with nothing less has God purposed 
to satisfy it. " Thy brother shall rise 
again." " Them that have been laid to 
sleep by Jesus will God bring with him '* 
We feel the weight of that mortality 
that often makes life a burden; yet we 
say, " Not that we would be unclothed, 
but clothed upon, that mortality may be 
swallowed up of life." We lay within the 
tomb the desire of our eyes, yet we cling 
to the remains, and feel as if the earth that 
struck the coffin were wounding the body 
on which it falls. At such a moment the 
thought of opening graves and rising dust 
is unutterably precious. We shall see 
that face again. We shall hear that voice 
again. Not only does the soul that filled 
that clay still live ; but that clay itself 



THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 107 

shall be revived. Our risen friend shall be 
in very deed — form, look, voice — the friend 
that we have known and loved. Our 
risen brother will be all that we knew him 
here when, hand in hand, we passed 
through the wilderness together, cheered 
with the blessed thought that no separa- 
tion could part us long, and that the 
grave itself could unlink neither hands 
nor hearts. 



CHAPTER VHX 



THE REUNION. 



The family has been all along a scatter* 
ed one. Not only has it been scattered 
along the ages, but it has been dispersed 
over every land. " Children of the dis~ 
persion " might well be the name of its 
members. They have no continuing city, 
nay, no city at all that they can call their 
own ; sure of nothing here beyond their 
bread and raiment; no where able to reckon 
upon a certain dwelling, yet having always 
the promise of it some where. 

Besides this scattering, arising from their 
being thus called out of every kindred and 
nation, there are others more bitter. There 
is the scattering which persecution makes, 



THE REUNION. 109 

when it drives them from city to city, 
There is the scattering which adversity 
lakes, when happy circles are broken up, 
and their fragments sent far asunder. 
There is the scattering which oftentimes 
jealousy and contention and selfish rivalry 
produce, even among the saints. There is 
the scattering which bereavement makes, 
when strong ties are broken, and warm 
love spilt like water on the ground ; when 
fellowship is rent asunder, and living 
sympathies chilled by death, and tears of 
choking anguish are all the relief of loneli- 
ness and sorrow. 

As Israel was scattered among the na- 
tions, so have the saints been ; not indeed 
like Israel, because of the wrath of God 
against them, but still scattered every 
where. " The Lord shall scatter thee 
among all people, from the one end of the 
earth even unto the other," (Deut. xxviii. 
64,) were God's words to Israel, and the 



110 THE REUNION. 

church feels how truly they suit her con* 
dition as a scattered flock. 

In primitive times, and often since that, 
in days of trouble and persecution, it was ■ 
truly and literally a scattering, just as 
when the autumn wind shakes down and 
tosses the ripe leaves to and fro. But in 
our day it is not so much a scattering, as a 
simple dwelling asunder, — by the calling 
out of every nation the few that make up 
the little flock. It is a gathering out, but 
not a gathering together. It is one family, 
yet the members know not, see not each 
other in the flesh. They are drawn by 
the Father's hand, and according to the 
Father's purpose, out of kingdoms and 
families wide asunder. They have no 
local centre, either of interest, or of resi- 
dence, or of government ; no common 
home, no common meeting-place, save that 
which faith gives them now in their Head 
above, or that which hope assures them 



THE REUNION. Ill 

of in the world to come, where they shall 
come together, face to face, as one house- 
hold, gathered under one roof, and seated 
around one table. 

This separation and apparent disunion 
is not natural or congenial. For there is 
a hidden magnetic virtue which uncon- 
sciously and irresistibly draws them to- 
wards each other. Separation is the pre- 
sent law of the kingdom, but this only 
because election is the law of the dispensa- 
tion. There is an affinity among the 
members which neither time nor distance 
can destroy. There is a love kindled they 
know not how, kept alive they know not 
how, but strong and unquenchable, the 
love of kin, the love of brotherhood : 

No distance breaks the tie of blood, 
Brothers are brothers evermore. — 

A.nd they feel this. Knit by the ties of a 

strange and unearthly union, they have a 

conscious feeling of oneness which nothing 

l 2 



112 THE REUNION. 

can shake. Deep hidden in each other's 
u heart of hearts/' they cannot consent to 
be perpetually asunder, but eagerly an- 
ticipate the day of promised union. . 

But there is another kind of separation 
which they have had to endure. Death 
has torn them from each other. From 
Abel downward there has been one long 
scene of bereavement. The griefs of part- 
ing make up the greatest amount of earth- 
ly suffering among the children of men. 
And from these griefs the saints have not 
been exempted. Bitter have been the 
farewells that have been spoken on earth, 
— around the death-bed, or in the prison, 
or on the sea-shore, or on the home- 
threshold, or in the city of strangers, — the 
farewells of men who knew that they 
should no more meet till the grave gave 
up its trust. Death has been the great 
scatterer, and the tomb has been the great 
receiver of the fragments. 

Our night of weeping has taken much 



THE REUNION, 113 

of its gloom and sadness from these rend- 
ings asunder. The pain of parting, in the 
case of the saints, has much to alleviate it, 
but still the bitterness is there. We feel 
that we must separate, and though it be 
only for a while, still our hearts bleed with 
the wound. 

But there is reunion. And one of the 
joys of the morning is this reunion among 
the saints. During the night they had 
been scattered, in the morning they are 
gathered together. In the wilderness they 
have been separated, but in the kingdom 
they shall meet. During this age they 
have been like the drops of the fitful 
shower ; in the age to come they shall be 
like the dew of Hermon, the dew that de- 
scended upon the mountains of Zion, one 
radiant company, alighting upon the holy 
hills, and bringing with them refreshment 
to a weary earth. Then shall fully be 
answered the prayer of the Lord, " That 
they all may be one ; as thou, Father, art 



114 THE REUNION. 

in me, and I in thee, that they also may be 
one in us : that the world may believe 
that thou hast sent me. And the glory 
which thou gavest me I have given them ; 
that they may be one, even as we are one : 
I in them, and thou in me, that they may 
be made perfect in one ; and that the world 
may know that thou hast sent me, and 
hast loved them, as thou hast loved me." 
(John xvii. 21—23.) 

" I will smite the Shepherd, and the 
sheep of the flock shall be scattered 
abroad." (Matt. xxvi. 31.) Such is our 
present position — a smitten Shepherd and 
a scattered flock ! But the day is at hand 
when " he that scattered shall gather," 
and there shall be a glorified Shepherd and 
a gathered flock ; not merely one flock, 
one fold, and one Shepherd, but one flock 
gathered into the one fold around the 
one Shepherd, the scattering ceased, the 
wandering at an end, the famine ex- 
changed for the green pastures, the dange* 



THE REUNION. 115 

forgotten, and the devouring lion bound. 
Then shall fully come to pass the prophecy 
regarding the issues of the Surety's death, 
" that he should gather together in one 
the children of God that were scattered 
abroad." (John xi. 52.) Then what is 
written of Israel shall, in a higher sense, be 
fulfilled in the church • " Behold, I, even I, 
will both search my sheep, and seek them 
out. As a shepherd seeketh out his 
flock in the day that he is among his 
sheep that are scattered ; so will I seek 
out my sheep, and will deliver them out of 
all places where they have been scattered 
in the cloudy and dark day. I will feed 
them in a good pasture, and upon the high 
mountains of Israel shall their fold be. 
And I will set up one shepherd over them, 
and he shall feed them, even my servant 
David ; he shall feed them, and he shall 
be their shepherd." And as the ingather- 
ing of Israel is to be a blessing diffusing 
itself on every side, so is the reunion of 



116 THE REUNION. 

the scattered church to be to the world ; so 
that we may use Israel's promise here 
also : " I will make them and the places 
round about my hill a blessing ; and I 
will cause the shower to come clown in 
his season ; there shall be showers of bless- 
ing." (Ezek. xxxiv. 11—26.) 

This reunion is when the Lord returns. 
When the Head appears, then the members 
come together. They have always been 
united, — for just as the Godhead was still 
united to the manhood of Christ, even 
when his body was in the tomb, so the 
oneness between the members, both with 
each other and with their Head, has been 
always kept unbroken. But when he 
comes, this union is fully felt, realized, 
seen, manifested. " When Christ who is 
our life shall appear, then shall we also 
appear with him in glory." (Col. iii. 4.) 

This reunion is at " the resurrection of 
the just." Then every remaining particle 
of separation is removed, — soul and body 



THE REUNION. 117 

meet,— both perfect ; no trace of " this 
vile body/' or this dust-cleaving soul. The 
corruptible has gone, and the incorruptible 
has come. Our reunion shall be in incor- 
ruption ; hands that shall never grow pal- 
sied clasping each other, and renewing 
broken companionships, — eyes that shall 
never dim gazing on each other with purer 
love. 

This reunion is in the cloud of glory, 
in which the Lord comes again. When he 
went up from Olivet, this cloud received 
him, and fain would his disciples have 
gone up along with him. But into that 
glorious pavilion, — his tabernacle, — shall 
they yet ascend ; there to meet with him, 
and to embrace each other, coming toge- 
ther into that mysterious dwelling-place, 
from the four winds of heaven, " out of 
every kindred, and nation, and tongue, and 
people. 5 ' 

This reunion is the marriage-day, and 
that cloud-curtained pavilion the Bride- 



118 THE REUNION. 

groom's chamber. There the bride is now 
seen as one. And there she realizes her 
own oneness in a way unimagined before. 
There too the marriage-feast is spread, and 
the bride takes her place of honour at the 
marriage-table, — " glorious within/' as well 
as without, — not, like the harlot-bride, 
decked with purple, and scarlet, and gold, 
and gems (Rev. xvii. 4; xviii. 16); but 
" arrayed in fine linen, clean and white." 
(xix. 8.) 

It is to this reunion, and to the honours 
that shall then be given to the whole church 
at once, that the apostle refers, when he says, 
that " they (the Old Testament saints, to 
whom the promises came) without us 
should not be made perfect." (Heb. xi. 39, 
40.) Thus he intimates that the actual 
possession of the thing promised has not 
yet been given. It is deferred until the 
Lord come, in order that no age, nor sec- 
tion, nor individuals of the church should 
be perfectly blest and glorified before the 



THE REUNION. 119 

rest; for all must be raised up together, 
all caught up together, all crowned toge- 
ther, seeing they are one body, — one bride.* 
He points to the day of the Lord as the 
day of our common introduction into the 
inheritance, — the day of our common re- 
entrance into Eden, — the day when, as 
one vast multitude of all kindreds, we shall 
enter in through the gates into the city ; — 
the day of our common crowning, our com- 
mon triumph. For it is to be one crowning, 
one enthroning, one festival, one triumph, 
one entrance for the whole church, from 
the beginning. The members are not 
crowned alone, nor in fragments, nor in 
sections ; but in one glorious hour they re- 
ceive their everlasting crowns, and take 
their seats, side by side, with their Lord, 

* The words, " God having provided the better thing 
for us," form a parenthesis, and are thrown in for the 
purpose of showing that the " good things to come," 
that is, the inheritance, belong to us, as much as to thf 
ancient saints, who got the promise. 



120 THE REUNION. 

and with each other, in simultaneous glad* 
ness, upon the long-expected throne. 

The preparations for this union have 
long been making. They began with us 
individually, when first the scattered frag- 
ments of our souls were brought, together 
by the Holy Ghost at our conversion. Be- 
fore that, our " hearts were divided ; " and 
this was our special sin. (Hos. x. 2.) But 
then they were " united," — at least in some 
measure, though still callins: for the un- 

3 o o 

ceasing prayer, " Unite my heart to fear 
thy name." (Psa. lxxxvi. 11.)* It was 
first the inner man that came under the 
power of sin and was broken into parts ; 
then the outer man followed. Both were 

* The reader will call to mind Augustine's remark- 
able statement to this effect, concerning himself, though 
he does not refer to either of the above passages. Speak- 
ing of God as his delight, " dulcedo non fallax, dulcedo 
felix et secura," he adds, u coliigens me a dispersione 
in qua frustratim discissus sum ; dum ab uno te aver- 
sus, in multa evanui." — Confessions, Book II. chap. i. 



THE REUNION. 121 

created whole in every sense of that word* 
and both have ceased to be ichole in any 
sense of it. When restoration begins, it 
begins with the reunion of the inner 
man, and in the resurrection passes on to 
the outer, bringing together the two re- 
stored parts. It was the individual that 
first was subjected to sin, and then the 
mass. So it is the individual that is first 
restored. And this is the process that is 
now going on under the almighty, vivify- 
ing, uniting energy of the Holy Spirit. 
But the reunion is not complete till one- 
ness is brought back to the mass, to the 
body, — till all those members that have 
been singly restored, be brought together, 
and so the body made whole. 

It is for this we wait until the Lord 
come. For as it was the first Adam that 
broke creation into fragments, so it is the 
second Adam that is to restore creation in 
all its parts and regions, and make it one 
again. The good and the evil then are 



122 THE REUNION. 

parted for ever, but the good and the good 
are brought into perfect oneness, — a oneness 
so complete, so abiding, as more than to 
compensate for brokenness and separation 
here. 

The soul and the body come together and 
form one glorified man. The ten thousand 
members of the church come together and 
form one glorified church. ' The scattered 
stones come together and form one living 
temple. The bride and the Bridegroom 
meet. Here it has been one Lord, one 
faith, one baptism; there it shall be one 
body, one bride, one vine, one temple, one 
family, one city, one kingdom. 

The broken fruitfulness, the fitful in- 
constancy, of the cursed earth shall pass 
into the unbroken beauty of the new crea- 
tion. The discord of the troubled ele- 
ments shall be laid, and harmony return. 
The warring animals shall lie down in 
peace. 

Then shall heaven and earth come to* 



THE REUNION. 123 

gether into one. That which we call dis- 
tance is annihilated, and the curtain drawn 
by sin is withdrawn from between the uppei 
and the lower glory, and the fields of a 
paradise that was never lost are brought 
into happy neighbourhood with the fields of 
paradise regained ; God's purpose develop- 
ing itself in the oneness of a two-fold glory, 
— the rulers and the ruled, — the risen and 
the unrisen, the celestial and the terrestrial, 
— the glory that is in the heaven above, 
the glory that is in the earth beneath ; for 
" there are celestial bodies and bodies 
terrestrial, but the glory of the celestial 
is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is 
another." 

Such scenes we need to dwell upon, that 
as our tribulations abound, so also our con- 
solations may abound. Our wounds here 
are long in healing. Bereavements keep 
the heart long bleeding. Melancthon, with 
a tender simplicity so like himself, refers 
to his feelings when his child was taken 

M 2 



124 THE REUNION. 

from him by death. He wept as he re- 
called the past. It pierced his soul to re- 
member the time, when once, as he sat 
weeping, his little one with its little nap- 
kin wiped the tears from his cheeks* 

Recollections like these haunt us through 
life, ever and anon newly brought up by 
passing scenes. Some summer morning's 
sun recalls, with stinging freshness, the 
hour when that same sun streamed in 
through our window upon a dying infant's 
cradle, as if to bring out all the beauty of 
the parting smile, and engrave it upon our 
hearts for ever. Or it is a funeral scene 
that comes up to memory, — a funeral scene 
that had but a few days before been a bridal 
one, — and never on earth can we forget 
the outburst of our grief, when we saw the 
bridal flowers laid upon the new-made 
tomb. Or some wintry noon recalls the 
time and the scene when we laid a parent's 

* Memini cum infant ula mihi lachrymas a genis 
detergeret suo indusiolo, quo erat induta mane ; hio 
gestus penetravit in animum meum. 



THE REUNION. 125 

dust within its resting-place, and left it to 
sleep in winter's grave of snows. These 
memories haunt us, pierce us, and make 
us feel what a desolate place this is, and 
what an infinitely desirable thing it would 
be to meet these lost ones again, where the 
meeting shall be eternal. 

Hence the tidings of this reunion in the 
many mansions are like home-greetings. 
They relieve the smitten heart. They bid 
us be of good cheer, for the separation is 
but brief, and the meeting to which we 
look forward will be the happiest ever en- 
joyed. The time of sorrowful recollections 
will soon pass, and no remembrance remain 
but that which will make our joy to over- 
flow. 

Every thing connected with this re- 
union is fitted to enhance its blessedness. 
To meet again any where, or any how, or 
at any time, would be blessed ; how much 
more at such a time, in such circumstances, 
and in such a home ! The dark past lies 
m 3 



126 THE REUNION. 

behind us like a prison from which we have 
come forth, or like a wreck from which we 
have escaped in safety and landed in a 
quiet haven. We meet where separation 
is an impossibility, where distance no 
more tries fidelity, or pains the spirit, or 
mars the joy of loving. We meet in a 
kingdom. We meet at a marriage-table. 
We meet in the " prepared city," the New 
Jerusalem. We meet under the shadow of 
the tree of life, and on the banks of the 
river of life. We meet to keep festival and 
sing the songs of triumph. It was blessed 
to meet here for a day ; how much more to 
meet in the kingdom for ever ! It was 
blessed to meet, even with parting full in 
view; how much more so when no such 
cloud overhangs our future ! It was blessed 
to meet in the wilderness and the land of 
graves; how much more in paradise, and in 
the land where death enters not ! It was 
blessed to meet " in the night," — though 
chill and dark ; how much more in the 



THE REUNION. 127 

morning, when light has risen and the 
troubled sky is cleared, and joy is spreading 
itself around us like a new atmosphere, 
from which every element of sorrow has 
disappeared ! 






CHAPTER IX. 

THE PRESENCE OF THE LORD. 

To love in absence, though with the 
knowledge of being beloved, and with the 
certainty of meeting ere long, is but a min- 
gled joy. It contents us in the room of 
something better and more blessed, but it 
lacks that which true love longs for, the 
presence of the beloved one. That pre- 
sence fills up the joy and turns every sha- 
dow into brightness. 

Especially when this time of absence is 
a time of weakness and suffering, and en- 
durance of wrong; when dangers come 
thickly around, and enemies spare not, and 
advantage is taken by the strong to vex or 
injure the defenceless. Then love in ab- 



Tr-K "PRESENCE OF THE LOED. 129 

sence, txiough felt to be a sure consolation, 
is found to be insufficient, and the heart 
cheers itself with the thought that the in- 
terval of loneliness is brief, and that the 
days of separation are fast running out. 

It is with such feelings that we look for 
ward to our meeting with Him " whom 
having not seen we love/' and anticipate 
the joy of being for ever " with the Lord." 
That day of meeting has in it enough of 
gladness to make up for all the past. And 
then it is eternal. It is not meeting to- 
day, and parting to-morrow ; it is meeting 
once and for ever. To see him face to face, 
even for a day, how blessed ! To be " with 
him" for a life-time, or an age, even though 
with intervals of absence between, how 
gladdening ! But to be with him for ever, 
• — or always, as it stands in the original, — 
this surely is the very filling up of all our 

joy- 
Has not the Lord, however, been always 
with us ? Has he not said, " Lo, I am with 



130 THE PRESENCE 

you alway, even unto the end of the 
world ? " Yes. Nor ought the church to 
undervalue this nearness, this fellowship. 
It is no shadow or fancy ; it is reality. It 
is that same reality to which the Lord re- 
ferred when he said, " He that loveth me 
shall be loved of my Father ; and I will 
love him, and will manifest myself to him " 
(John xiv. 21); or, as the old versions have 
it, " will show mine own self to him." For 
when Jude put the question, " Lord, how 
is it that thou wilt manifest thyself to 
us, and not unto the world?" that is, " how 
shall it be that the world shall not see thee, 
and yet we who are living in the world 
shall see thee ? how is it that we shall have 
thy presence, and yet the world have it 
not ? " " Jesus answered and said unto 
him, If a man love me he will keep my 
words ; and my Father will love him, and 
we will come unto him, and make our 
abode with him." 

So that thus we have had the Lord 



OF THE LORD. 131 

always with us, nay, making his abode with 
us. It was when first we gave credit to the 
Divine testimony concerning the free love 
of God, in the gift of his Son, that we drew 
nigh to him and he to us. It was then 
that he came in unto us, and took up his 
abode with us. It was when we heard his 
voice and opened the door, that he came in 
to sup with us. And it is this conscious 
presence, — this presence which faith real- 
izes, — that cheers us amid tribulation here. 
In the furnace we have one like the Son 
of man to keep us company, and to pre- 
vent the flame from kindling upon us. 

But this is, after all, incomplete. It is 
the enjoyment of as much fellowship as 
can be tasted in absence, but it is no more. 
Nor is it intended to supersede something 
nearer and more complete, — far less to 
make us content with absence. Nay, its 
tendency is to make us less and less satis- 
fied with absence. It gives us such a 
relish for intercourse, that we long for 



132 THE PRESENCE 

communion more unhindered, — eye to eye 
and face to face. This closer intercourse, 
this actual vision, this bodily nearness, we 
are yet to enjoy. The hope given us is to 
be " with the Lord/' — with him in a way 
such as we have never been. 

Let no one despise this nearness, nor 
speak evil of it, as if it were material and 
carnal. Many speak as if their bodies were 
a curse, — as if matter were some piece of 
mis-creation to which we had unnaturally 
and unhappily been fastened. And others 
tell us that actual intercourse, such as we 
refer to, the intercourse of vision and voice, 
is a poor thing, not to be named beside the 
other, which is, as they conceive, the deeper 
and the truer. 

But is it so? Is matter so despicable ? 
Are our bodies such hinderances to true 
fellowship? Is the eye nothing, the ear 
nothing, the smile nothing, the voice no- 
thing, the embrace nothing, the clasping 
of the hand nothing? Is personal com- 



OF THE LORI?, 133 

munion a hinderance to earthly friendships 1 
Can the friend enjoy the friend as well afai 
off as near ? Is it no matter to the wife 
though her husband be unseen and distant? 
Granting that we can still love and receive 
love in return, is distance no barrier, does 
absence make no blank? Do we slight 
bodily presence, visible intercourse, as 
worthless, almost undesirable ? Is not the 
reverse one of the most deep-seated feelings 
of our nature ? And is it not to this deep- 
seated feeling that the incarnation appeals? 
Is that incarnation useless, save as furnish- 
ing a victim for the altar, — and providing 
blood for the cleansing of the worshipper ? 
No. The incarnation brings God nigh to 
us in a way such as could not have been 
done by any other means. He became 
bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, 
that we might have a being like ourselves 
to commune with, to love, to lean upon. 
In that day when we shall be " with 



134 THE PRESENCE 

the Lord/' we shall know to the full the 
design of God in the incarnation of his 
Son, and taste the blessedness of seeing 
him as he is. 

The time of this meeting is his coming ; 
not till then. Before that there is distance 
and imperfection. I know that in the 
disembodied state there will be greater 
nearness and fuller enjoyment than now. 
And this the apostle longed for when he 
had the " desire to depart and be with 
Christ, which is far better." Even before 
the resurrection there is a " being with 
Christ," more satisfying than what we 
enjoy here ; a " being with Christ " which is 
truly " far better." Nor would I disparage 
this blessedness. But still this is not to be 
compared with resurrection -nearness, and 
resurrection-fellowship, when, in a way up 
till that time unknown, we shall be intro- 
duced into the very presence of the King, 
all distance annihilated, all fellowship com- 



OF THE LORD. 135 

pleted, all joy consummated, all coldness 
done away, all shadows dissipated, and 
"so we shall ever be with the Lord." 

But, for the better understanding of this 
subject, let us look to the way in which the 
apostle handles it in administering comfort 
to the Thessalonian church, some of whom 
had been giving way to immoderate grief 
for the dead. 

The grief of the heathen was immoderate, 
and their expressions of it equally so. No 
wonder. Their hearts beat with as firm a 
pulse as ours, and natural affection was as 
strong with them as with us. The husband 
mourned the wife, the wife the husband ; 
the parent mourned the child, the child 
the parent ; friends wept over the grave of 
friends. The breaking of these ties was 
bitter ; and the special sting was, that they 
had no hope of reunion. Death to them 
was a parting for ever ; not as when one 
parts in the morning to meet at even, or as 
when one parts this year to meet a few 

N 2 



136 THE PRESENCE 

years hence. It was hopeless separation. 
At the best it was a vague uncertainty, to 
which deep grief gives no heed ; more 
commonly it was despair. Their sorrow 
was desperate, their wound incurable. 

The Thessalonian saints were sorrowing 
as those that had no hope, as if they had 
buried their beloved brethren in an eternal 
tomb. For this the apostle reproves them. 
He points out the hope, — a sure hope, a 
blessed hope, a hope fitted to bring true 
comfort. " Them that sleep in Jesus will 
God bring with him." They are not lost; 
they have only been laid to sleep by Jesus, 
and he will awake them when he returns, 
and bring them up out of their tombs. 
Their departure cannot be called dying ; it 
is only sleeping. It has nothing of the 
despair of death about it. Death has lost 
its sting ; the shroud its gloom ; the grave 
its terrors. It is an end of pain ; it is a 
ceasing from toil. " Blessed are the dead 
that die in the Lord, for they rest from 
their labours." 



OF THE LbRD. 137 

But the apostle looks beyond the rest- 
ing-place. " Thy brother shall rise again." 
God himself will uncover their tomb and 
call them up, at the return of Him who is 
the resurrection and the life. And this, says 
he, " we say unto you by the word of the 
Lord." He gives this consolation to them 
as a certainty ; having in it nothing vague 
or doubtful ; a certainty proclaimed by 
himself and resting on the Lord's own 
words to his disciples ere he left the earth, 
regarding his advent, and the gathering 
of his elect to him. 

The Lord is to come ! This is the cer- 
tainty. The Lord is to come ! And in that 
coming are wrapt up all the hopes of his 
saints. 

Of these saints there will be two classes 
when he comes. (1.) Those that are alive 
and remain ; the last generation of the 
church. For, says the apostle elsewhere, 
" We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be 
changed." (1 Cor. xv. 51.) (2.) Those 

N 3 



138 THE PRESENCE 

that have fallen asleep ; these forming the 
larger number, doubtless ; for the sleeping 
ones of all ages shall be there. It might 
be supposed that the living ones would 
have the advantage, as being alive when 
the Lord arrives. But, no. It is not so. 
They may have some advantages. They 
never taste death. They are like Enoch 
and Elijah. They know not the grave. 
They see no corruption. In their case soul 
and body are never separated. They do 
not meet the king of terrors, nor fall under 
his power.* 

* Thus Richard Baxter wrote : " Would it not re- 
joice your hearts if you were sure to live to see the 
coming of the Lord, and to see his glorious appearing 
and retinue ? If you were not to die, but to be caught 
up thus to meet the Lord, would you be averse to this ? 
Would it not be the greatest joy that you could desire ? 
For my own part, I must confess to you that death, as 
death, appeareth to me as an enemy, and my nature 
doth abhor and fear it. But the thoughts of the coming 
of the Lord are most sweet and joyful to me, so that if 
I were but sure that I should live to see it, and that the 
trumpet should sound, and the dead should rise, and 
the Lord appear, before the period of my age, it would 
be the joyfullest tidings to me in the world, Oh that I 



OP THE LORD. 139 

These are privileges ; and yet it might be 
said, on the other hand, that these saints do 
not taste the gladness of resurrection ; that 
they are not conformed to their Lord in 
this, that he died and rose. Still the end 
in both cases is the same, — the one shall 
have no advantage, no pre-eminence over 
the other. Both are " presented faultless 
before the presence of his glory with ex- 
ceeding joy ; " both equally faultless, 
though each has undergone a different 

might see his kingdom come ! It is the character of his 
saints to love his appearing and to look for that blessed 
hope ; ' The Spirit and the bride say come ; even so, 
come, Lord Jesus.' Come quickly, is the voice of faith, 
and hope, and love. But I find not that his "servants 
are thus characterized by their desire to die. It is 
therefore the presence of their Lord that they desire, 
but it is death that they abhor ; and therefore, though 
they can submit to death, it is the coming of Christ 
that they love and long for. If death be the last enemy 
to be destroyed at the resurrection, we may learn how 
earnestly believers should long and pray for the second 
coming of Christ, when this full and final conquest 
shall be made. There is something in death that is 
penal, even to believers ; but in the coming of Christ 
and their resurrection there is nothing but glorifying 
grace/' Works, vol. zvii. p. 555 — 590. 



140 THE PRESENCE 

process for the accomplishing of this. 
Thus, the one being changed and the other 
raised, they are formed into one company, 
marshalled into one mighty army, and 
then caught up into the clouds to meet the 
Lord in the air. 

The particulars of this coming, in so far 
as the apostle gives them, let us briefly 
look into. The Lord himself shall descend 
from heaven. The same Jesus that as- 
cended ; he who loved us and washed us 
from our sins in his own blood ; he — his 
own self — shall come — come in like manner 
as he was seen go into heaven. With a 
shout* This is the shout of a monarch's 
retinue, the shout of a great army. Just 
as God is said to have gone up with shouts, 
so is he to return ; return with the shout 
of the conqueror, the shout of triumph. 
Tfie voice of the archangel. A solitary 
voice is then heard making some mighty 
announcement, such as that of the angel 
standing upon sea and earth, and proclaim- 



OF THE LORD. 141 

tng that there should be time no longer 
(Rev. x. 6) ; or of that other angel, with 
whose glory the earth was lightened, cry- 
ing with a loud voice, Babylon is fallen 
(Rev. xviii. 2) ; or of that other angel, 
who cried with a loud voice to all the fowls 
of heaven, " Come, gather yourselves unto 
the supper of the great God." (Rev. xix. 
17.) The trump of God* It is elsewhere 
called " the last trump." (1 Cor. xv. 52.) 
It is God's own trumpet, the trumpet that 
awakes the dead ; not a voice merely, — as 
if that were too feeble for such a purpose, 
nor a common trumpet, but the trump of 
God, one that can pierce the grave and 
awake the dead. 

These are the steps and the accompani- 
ments of the advent. There is first the 
shout of the angelic host, as the Redeemer 
leaves his seat above to take possession of 
his kingdom here. This shout is continued 
as he descends. Then, as he approaches 
nearer, the multitude of the heavenly host 



142 THE PRESENCE 

is silent, and a solitary voice is heard, the 
voice of the archangel uttering God's mes- 
sage ; then comes the trumpet that calls 
forth the sleeping just. They obey the 
call. They arise. No holy dust remains 
behind. They put on immortality. Then, 
joined by the transfigured and glorified 
living, they hasten upwards to the embrace 
of their beloved Lord. 

It is into " the clouds," or " cloud," that 
they are caught up ; that cloud, or clouds, 
which in all likelihood rested above Eden, 
making it the place of " the presence of 
the Lord "(Gen. iii. 8; iv. 14, 16); which 
appeared to Moses at the bush ; which led 
Israel over the Red Sea and through the 
desert ; which covered Sinai ; which dwelt 
in the tabernacle and in the temple; which 
Isaiah saw ; which Ezekiel described ; 
which shone down upon the Son of God at 
his baptism and transfiguration ; which 
received him out of sight at his ascension ; 
which Stephen saw when breathing out 



OF THE LORD. 143 

his soul ; which smote Saul to the ground 
on his way to Damascus ; which, last of all, 
appeared to John in Patmos ; and which 
we know shall yet re-appear in the latter 
day. Into this cloud of the Divine presence, 
this symbol of the excellent glory, Jeho- 
vah's tent or dwelling-place, the ark of 
our safety against the flood of fire, shall 
the saints be caught up when the Lord ap- 
pears, and the voice is heard from heaven, 
" Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust :" 
and as it was said in Israel, 4C the song of 
the Lord began with trumpets," (2 Chron. 
xxix. &7,) even so with the trump of God 
shall our resurrection-song begin. 

Thus with songs shall we go up on high ; 
our songs in the night being exchanged 
for the songs of the morning. They shall 
be " songs of deliverance," with which we 
shall then be " compassed about " in that 
day when we get up into our " hiding- 
place " to be " preserved from trouble " 
(Psa. xxxii. 7) ; when we " enter into out 



144 THE PRESENCE 

chambers " and " shut our doors about 
us," until " the indignation be overpast." 
(Isa. xxviii. 20.) No longer in a strange 
land or by the rivers of Babylon shall we 
sing our songs ; no longer in " the house 
of our pilgrimage " or in the wilderness 
shall we make melody ; but in the King's 
own presence, in the great congregation, 
in the New Jerusalem which corneth down 
out of heaven from God. Then " standing 
upon the sea of glass/' and beholding the 
"judgments of God made manifest/' (Rev. 
xv. 2—4,) as Israel did when Pharaoh 
and his chariots sank like lead in the 
mighty waters, we sing the song of Moses 
and the song of the Lamb. 

Thus " caught up " into the cloud, we 
meet the Lord " in the air," as those do 
who go forth to meet a friend already on 
his way to them (Acts xxviii. 15) ; we meet 
him, in order that, being there acquitted, 
acknowledged, and confessed by him be- 
fore his Father and before the angels, we 



OF THE LORD. 145 

may form his retinue, and come with him to 
execute vengeance, to judge the world, to 
share his triumphs, to reign ->yith him in his 
glorious kingdom. (Zech. xiv. 5 ; 1 Thess. 
iii. 13 ; Jude 14 ; Rev. ii. 26 ; iii. 21.) 

Thus " meeting the Lord," we are to he 
** ever with him." He with us and we 
with him for ever. " So shall we ever be 
with the Lord ; " that is, " as we then shall 
meet, so we shall never part ; " as is our 
meeting, so is our eternal communion, our 
continuance in the presence of his glory. 
We shall see him face to face, and his 
name shall be in our foreheads. Sitting 
upon the same throne, dwelling under the 
same roof, hearing his voice, having free 
access to him at all times, doing his will, 
going forth on his errands, — this shall be 
the joy of our eternity. No distance ; that 
is annihilated. No estrangement ; that is 
among the things that are absolutely im- 
possible. No cloud between ; that is swept 
away and cannot re-appear. No coldness ; 



146 THE PRESENCE 

for love is always full. No interruption ; 
for who can come between the Bridegroom 
and the bride ? No change ; for he makes 
us like himself, without variableness. No 
parting ; for we have reached our home to 
go out no more. No end ; for the dura- 
tion of our fellowship is the life of the 
Ancient of days, of Him who is " from 
everlasting to everlasting." 

" With the Lord ! " It would be much 
to be with Enoch, or with Abraham, or 
with Moses, or with Elijah, or with Paul ; 
much to share their fellowship, to have 
converse with them on the things of God 
and the story of their own wondrous lives ; 
how much more to be " with the Lord !" 
To be like Peter at his side, like Mary at 
his feet, like John in his bosom. To have 
met him in the streets of Jerusalem, or by 
the sea of Galilee, or at Jacob's well ; to 
have heard him name your name and 
salute you, as he passed, with the wish of 
" peace;" to have dwelt in the next house 



OF THE LORD. 147 

to his at Nazareth, to have been a guest at 
the table of Lazarus when he was there, 
to have slept under that roof, it might be 
in the apartment next the Lord of glory ! 
How much should we have valued privileges 
such as these, treasuring them in memory, 
like gold ! Nay, even to hear the tidings oi 
his love, to have a message from him, to be 
told that he was gracious to us and kept 
us in mind, to be any where beyond the 
reach of sin and pain, how much ! Oh, what 
then must it be to be " with the Lord," — 
with him in his glory ; " with him," as 
the friend is with the friend : " with him," 
as the bride is with the bridegroom ; say- 
ing without fear or check, " Let him kiss 
me with the kisses of his mouth, for thy 
love is better than wine ; " and hearing him 
say in return, " Thou art all fair, my love : 
there is no spot in thee. Come with me 
from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from 
Lebanon: look from the top of Amana, 
from the top of Shenir and Her m on . 
o 2 



148 THE PRESENCE 

thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my 
spouse ; ihou hast ravished my heart with 
one of thine eyes, with one turn of thy 
neck. How fair is thy love, my sister, my 
spouse ! how much better is thy love than 
wine!" (Sol. Song iv. 7—10.) 

" Ever wifch the Lord ! " This soothes 
all sorrow and sums up all joy. If even 
here we can suy so gladly and so surely, 
" I am persuaded that neither death, nor 
life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor 
powers, nor things present, nor things to 
come, nor height, nor dep|h, nor any other 
creature, shall be able to separate us from 
the love of God which is in Christ Jesus 
our Lord," how much more gladly and 
surely shall we be able to say it then ! 

For ever to behold him shine, 
For evermore to call him mine ! 

This is what we look for ; this is our 
watchword and our song even in the day of 
absence and sorrow; and it is this that 
makes the expected morning so truly a 



OF THE LORD, 149 

morning of joy. " As for me, I will be- 
hold thy face in righteousness : I shall be 
satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness." 
(Psa. xvii. 15.)* 

* * Hasten, O my Saviour, the time of thy return; 
send forth thine angels, and let that dreadful, joyful 
trumpet sound ; delay not, lest the living give up their 
hopes ; delay not, lest earth should grow like hell, and 
lest thy church by division be crumbled all to dust ; 
delay not, lest the grave should boast of victory, and 
having learned rebellion of its guest, should plead pre- 
scription, and refuse to deliver thee up thy due. O 
hasten that great resurrection-day, when thy command 
shall go forth and none shall disobey ; when the sea 
and earth shall yield up their hostages, and all that 
sleep shall awake, and the dead in Christ shall first 
arise ; when the seed that thou sowedst corruptible 
shall come forth incorruptible ; and the graves that re- 
ceived but rottenness, and retained but dust, shall return 
thee glorious stars and suns. Return, O Lord, how 
long ! O let thy kingdom come. Thy desolate bride 
saith, Come ! Forthy Spirit within her saith, Come ! The 
whole creation saith, Come, waiting to be delivered from 
the bondage of corruption. Thyself hath said, Surely I 
come. Amen ; even so, come, Lord Jesus." — Baxter, 
Works, vol. xxiii. p. 449, 450. 



03 



CHAPTER X. 



THE KINGDOM. 



That to which the " much tribulation M 
leads us, is a kingdom. (Acts xiv. 22.) It 
is to this that it ministers an " abundant 
entrance," (2 Pet. i. 11,) an entrance in 
itself not joyous indeed, but grievous, yet 
in its issues glorious. 

Hitherto it has been midnight and the 
wilderness ; ere long it shall be morning 
and the kingdom. For it is " in the 
morning " that the righteous are to " have 
dominion." (Psa. xlix. 14.) Just as the 
night has been the time of down -treading, 
and " wearing out," so the morning is the 
time of having dominion, the time of 
* bringing judgment to light." (Zeph. iii. 



THE KINGDOM. 151 

5.) When " the Just One shall rule over 
men/' he shall be " as the light of the 
morning when the sun riseth, a morning 
without clouds." (2 Sam. xxiii. 3, 4.) The 
time when " the Lord shall help/' is when 
" the morning appeareth " (Psa. xlvi. 5, 
margin) ; at evening- tide there is trouble, 
but " before the morning he is not." (Isa. 
xvii. 14.) The reign of Antichrist is over, 
and the reign of Christ begins. The king- 
dom of the unrighteous is broken to pieces, 
and the kingdom of the righteous rises in its 
stead. Lucifer, the mock " light- bringer," 
the false " son of the morning," vanishes 
from the heavens, and " the true light," the 
" bright and morning-star," takes his place 
in the firmament, unclouded and unsetting 
in his glory. " The kingdom and dominion, 
and the greatness of the kingdom under 
the whole heaven, is given to the people of 
the saints of the Most High." (Dan. vii. 
27.) The church's weary burden is no 
longer " How long, O Lord," but " The 



152 THE KINGDOM. 

Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice ! " (Psa. 
xcvii. 1.) Her prayer " thy kingdom come," 
is exchanged for the thanksgiving of the 
" great voices in heaven/' " The kingdoms 
of this world are become the kingdoms of 
our Lord, and of his Christ ; " " We give 
thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which 
art, and wast, and art to come, because 
thou hast taken to thee thy great power, 
and hast reigned ;" " Alleluia, for the Lord 
God Omnipotent reigneth." (Rev. xi. 15 ; 
xix. 6.) 

That to which we are hastening on is not 
merely an inheritance, but a royal inherit- 
ance, — a kingdom. That for which we 
suffer is a crown. " If we suffer, we shall 
also reign with him." As we have been 
truly fellow-sufferers, we shall be as truly 
fellow -reigners. The suffering has been 
real, so shall the reigning be. This is " the 
reeompence of reward " to which we have 
respect when we " choose rather to suffer 
affliction with the people of God, than tc 



THE KINGDOM. 133 

enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season." 
(Heb. xi. 25.) This is " the better and 
the enduring substance/' for which we are 
willing to " endure the great fight of afflic- 
tions." (Heb. x. 32, 34.) This is the sum- 
ming up of earth's toil and grief, — the issue 
of a life-time's conflict with weariness, and 
wrong, and sin. 

To think of trial as a preparation for the 
kingdom is much ; but to look at it as an 
entrance into it is more. At the end of 
time's dark avenue stands the mansion- 
house, the palace ! At the edge of our de- 
sert-track lies the kingdom ! The avenue 
may be rugged under foot, thorny on every 
side, and gloomy over head ; the wilder- 
ness may be "waste and howling;" yet 
they are passages, — entrances ; they are 
not interminable, and their end is gladness. 
They usher us into a state which will, in a 
moment, efface the bitter past, so that it 
'* shall not once be remembered nor come 
into mind." Thus, though in one aspect 



154 THE KINGDOM. 

tribulation seems a path or gate-way fenced 
with the brier, and hard to fight through ; 
yet in another it is the conqueror's tri- 
umphal arch under which we pass into the 
kingdom ; so that while passing through 
we can sing the song of him who long ago 
went this way before us : " I reckon that 
the sufferings of this present time are not 
worthy to be compared with the glory that 
shall be revealed in us." (Rom. viii. 18.) 

The thought of the kingdom cheers us, 
and the stray gleams of it which faith gives 
us are like the lattice-lights of a loved 
dwelling, sparkling through the thicket, to 
the weary eye of a benighted wanderer. 
Yes, we are heirs of nothing less than a 
kingdom, however unlike such we may 
seem at present, and however ambitious it 
may be reckoned to claim so much, and to 
aspire so high. Robes of royalty shall soon 
cover all our unseemliness; and beneath 
the glory of a throne we shall bury all oui 
poverty, and shame, and grief. 



THE KINGDOM. 155 

But this is not all. The varied excel- 
lences of that kingdom, as made known to 
us by prophets and apostles, are such 
as specially to meet our case, and con- 
trast with our present condition. This 
fitness, — this contrast make the thoughts 
of the kingdom doubly precious and con- 
soling. 

1. It is the kingdom of God. (1 Cor. vL 
9.) Man's kingdoms have passed away, — 
those kingdoms under which the saints of 
God have been trodden down. And now 
all that is man's is gone, and nothing re- 
mains but what is God's ! The glory of the 
kingdom is this, that it is altogether God's. 
It must, then, be perfect and blessed, — » 
wholly unlike any thing that these eyes of 
ours have seen. If it were but a reforma- 
tion of human kingdoms, if it were a mere 
change of dynasty, the prospect of it would 
be but doubtful comfort ; but it is an en- 
tire passing away of the old, and a making 
all things new. It is the return of God to 



156 the kingdom:. 

his own world ; — and oh, what will not that 
return effect for us ! His re-enthronement 
is what we desire ; for it is this alone that 
gives us the assurance of perpetuity and 
stability, against which no enemy shall 
prevail. It was to that re-enthronement 
that Jesus looked forward when about to 
ascend the cross, and of which he spoke 
twice over at the paschal- table (Luke xxii. 
16, 18) ; as if this were " the joy set before 
him," because of which he " endured the 
cross, despising the shame." (Heb. xii. 2.) 
It is that re-enthronement that we also 
anticipate as the day of our triumph, for 
then shall we " shine as the sun in the 
kingdom of our Father." (Matt. xiii. 43.) 
2. It is the kingdom of Christ. (Col. i. 
13.) This assures that we shall feel at 
home there. It is no stranger who is to 
seat us on the throne beside him ; but our 
nearest of kin, — the Man who died for us. 
It is the pierced hands that wield the seep* 
tre. This meets our case. For we are 



THE KINGDOM. 157 

strangers here, specially feeling not at 
home in the courts and palaces of earth. 
But then it shall be otherwise. Here we 
are as men standing outside the kingdoms 
of the world. They belong to the " prince 
of this world/' but not to Christ, and there- 
fore not to us. They greet us with no 
friendly welcome. They have no honours 
for us. They make us stand without. They 
are to us what Pilate, and Herod, and An- 
nas were to Jesus ; they bid us be wrong- 
ed and smitten, or, at least, look on while 
we endure " tribulation, distress, persecu- 
tion, famine, nakedness, peril, sword." 
Much of the church's tribulation has arisen 
from the kingdoms of this world not being 
Christ's. But in the age to come, it is 
Christ that is to reign, all things being put 
in subjection to him. He who is to reign 
knows what it is to be hated by the world, 
and knows, therefore, how to make up to 
us, in his kingdom, for all the hatred where- 
with we have been hated, and for all the 



158 THE KINGDOM* 

sorrow which has bowed us down while 
here. And such is obviously the point of 
Christ's declaration to his disciples. (Luke 
xxii. 28 — 30.) For having said to them, 
" Ye are they which have continued with 
me in my temptations/' he adds, " and I 
appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Fa- 
ther hath appointed unto me ; that ye may 
eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, 
and sit on thrones, judging the twelve 
tribes of Israel ; " thus linking together 
present suffering for Christ and future 
reigning with Christ, — present continuance 
with him in trial, and future association 
with him in his own kingdom, when he 
returns to receive the crown. 

3. It is a kingdom not of this world. 
(John xviii. 36.) The words " not of this 
world " are, literally, " not out of, or not 
taken out of, this world ; " just as when 
Christ says, " Ye are of this world, I am 
not of this world." (John viii. 23.) This 
world is wholly evil, and under the do- 



THE KINGDOM. 159 

minion of the evil one. Its territory is under 
a curse. It is called " this present evil 
world." (Gal. i. 4.) It lieth in wickedness. 
(1 John v. 19.) Its kingdoms are compared 
to hideous beasts of prey. (Dan. vii.) Satan 
and his hosts, the rulers of the darkness of 
this world. (Eph. vi. 12.) Thus every thing 
pertaining to it is unholy. Now, the king- 
dom to come is not fashioned out of its ma- 
terials, so as to retain any thing of its like- 
ness. Between the kingdoms of this world 
and the kingdom of the world to come, 
there is no congeniality or resemblance. Of 
" this world " it is said, that it rejects the 
Spirit, nay, it cannot receive him (John 
xiv. 17) ; but that world is to be full of the 
Spirit, for " the Spirit is to be poured from 
on high, and the wilderness is to become a 
fruitful field." (Isa. xxxii. 15.) Of this 
world Satan is king ; of that world Christ 
is King. This world knows not God, neither 
the Father nor the Son ; but in that world 
" all shall know him, from the least unto 
p 2 



160 THE KINGDOM. 

the greatest." In this world all is dark- 
ness; in that world all is light. This 
world is to be fought against and over- 
come ; that world is to he loved and en- 
joyed. Thus the kingdom of which we are 
the heirs, is as unlike this world as Eden 
was unlike the wilderness. And it is this 
that makes it so desirable. Had it re- 
tained any fragments of this world's evil; 
had it been a mere re -construction of its 
carnal fabric ; had it taken up into itself 
any of its corrupt qualities, then our com- 
fort were but poor in anticipating its ar- 
rival, and counting on the exchange. But 
it is not of this world, — and this is our joy. 
We have had enough of this world to make 
us long for its passing away ; and to wel- 
come a kingdom in which no taint or trace 
of it shall be found. 

4. It is a righteous kingdom. " The 
kingdom of God is not meat and drink," 
that is, not a carnal kingdom, made up of 
outward observances and sensual dainties, 



THE KINGDOM. 161 

but " righteousness, and peace, and joy in 
the Holy Ghost;" that is, a righteous, 
peaceful, joyful kingdom, dwelt in and per- 
vaded by the Holy Spirit, so that all belong- 
ing to it must be like itself. (Rom. xiv. 17.) 
It is a kingdom whose territory is the " new 
earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness" (2 
Pet. iii. 13.) The " unrighteous shall not 
inherit it" (1 Cor. vi. 9); but the saints 
alone shall possess it. (Dan. vii. 18.) The 
"sceptre of this kingdom is a righteous 
sceptre." (Psa. xlv. 6.) He who wields it 
is the righteous King (Isa. xxxii. 1) ; and 
in his days shall the righteous flourish." 
(Psa. Ixxii. 7.) It is a " crown of right- 
eousness" that is laid up for us. (2 Tim. iv. 
8.) And then shall " the work of right- 
eousness be peace, and the effect of right- 
eousness quietness and assurance for ever." 
(Isa. xxxii. 17.) The righteousness of this 
kingdom makes it unspeakably attractive 
to those who have been wearied out with 
the unrighteousness of an unrighteous 
p 3 



162 THE KINGDOM. 

world. The thought that " the morning " 

is to bring in that righteous kingdom, com- 
forts us amid the clouds and thick darkness 
of this night of weeping. 

5. // is a kingdom of peace. War has 
by that time run its course ; its spears are 
broken and turned to ploughshares; strife 
and hatred have fled. The storm has be- 
come a calm, and the vexed sea is still. 
Holy tranquillity breathes over earth. " The 
mountains bring peace to the people, and 
the little hills, by righteousness ; — there 
shall be abundance of peace so long as the 
moon endureth." ( Psa. lxxii. 3 — 7.) "Up- 
on David, and upon his seed, and upon his 
house, and upon his throne, there shall be 
peace for ever from the Lord." (1 Kings 
ii. 33.) Far more truly than in the days of 
Solomon there shall be "peace on all sides 
round about " (1 Kings iv. 24) ; yea, the 
Lord God will give rest on every side, so 
that there shall be " neither adversary nor 
evil occurrent." (1 Kings v. 4.) Every 



THE KINGDOM. 163 

where shall he inscribed the motto upon 
Gideon's altar, "Jehovah-Shalom." (Judg. 
vi. 24, margin.) " The beasts of the field 
shall be at peace with us " (Job v. 23) ; for 
" the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and 
the leopard shall lie down with the kid, 
and the calf and the young lion and the 
fatling together, and a little child shall 
lead them ; and the cow and the bear shall 
feed, their young ones shall lie down toge- 
ther. They shall not hurt nor destroy in 
all my holy mountain." (Isa. xi. 6.) The 
groans of creation shall then be over, and 
its deliverance accomplished. All shall be 
peace ; for the great peace-maker is 
come. His name is King of Salem, that 
is, King of peace. (Heb. vii. 2.) He is 
called " the Prince of Peace" and " of the 
increase of his government and peace there 
shall be no end." (Isa. ix. 6, 7.) 

With what longing hearts do we desire 
the arrival of that kingdom, so unlike what 
this troubled earth has yet known from the 



164 THE KINGDOM. 

beginning hitherto. Each new sorrow stirs 
the longing. Each new conflict makes us 
glad at the thought that there is such a 
kingdom in reserve. Were it not for this, 
how we should "fret because of evil-doers;" 
and how soon should our patience give 
w r ay ! But with our eye upon this kingdom 
of peace, we can ".glory in tribulation," 
we can drink the bitterest cup, we can face 
the thickest storm, we can endure the 
rudest clamour; and when the world's up- 
roar waxes loudest we can " lift up our 
heads, knowing that our redemption draw- 
eth«nigh." 

6. It is a kingdom that cannot be moved. 
(Heb. xii. 28.) All other kingdoms have 
not only been moved, but shaken to pieces. 
Great Babylon, " the glory of kingdoms," 
has been a sand-wreath, raised by one tide, 
and levelled by the next. So have all 
others been, greater or lesser. One by one 
they have been overthrown and crushed, or 
they have crumbled down and become like 



THE KINGDOM. 165 

the chaff of the summer threshing-floor. 
But the kingdom that we look for is " the 
everlasting kingdom of our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ." (2 Pet. i. 11.) It 
abides for ever. Neither force nor age can 
affect it. It rises out of the ruins of earth's 
present empires, though unlike them all. 
fhe things that can decay or moulder, are 
e shaken/' in order that they may be 
ihaken off, and that those things that can- 
not be shaken may remain. And thus 
there comes forth the immovable king- 
dom, — the kingdom into which sin comes 
not ; in which change has no place ; into 
which the curse eats not; of which wisdom 
and holiness are the strong pillars ; where 
misrule is unknown; where order triumphs; 
and of which the glory never dims. It is 
joy to us in such a world of instability and 
convulsion, to think of such a kingdom. 
Driven to and fro with the changes of the 
kingdoms we inhabit here; wearied with 
the falling and the rising, the casting down 



166 THE KINGDOM. 

and the building up, we long for a king 
dom that shall give us rest, a kingdom 
that cannot be moved. From this uncer- 
tainty and fickleness, how many of our 
griefs have come ! For what is there so 
saddening, so sickening, as the thought 
that every inch of ground beneath us is 
shifting, — that every prop on which we 
lean is breaking, that every twig to which 
we cling is snapping? As we draw our 
curtains around us, we know not what 
change, what loss, what sorrow shall greet 
us on the morrow. Or though going forth 
light-hearted and unburdened in the morn- 
ing, we tremble to think what clouds may 
have gathered over our dwelling ere the 
evening has fallen. Such is the perishable- 
ness, the changeableness of earth and its 
kingdoms ! What joy to look beyond them 
all, and see through their shadows the 
everlasting kingdom ! Nay, to be assured 
that this kingdom is at hand, and that ere 
long He " who is without variableness 01 



THE KINGDOM. 167 

shadow of turning/' shall bid us welcome 
to its unchanging rest; and He who is " the 
same yesterday, to-day, and for ever," shall 
seat us upon the eternal throne. 

" Heaven," says an old writer, " is a com- 
pany of noble venturers for Christ ; " and we 
may add, of "noble sufferers too." — Of such 
is the kingdom of heaven ! It is in that 
kingdom that we shall rest from our labours, 
and find the end of all our sufferings. We 
shall find that we have not ventured too 
much, nor laboured too much, nor suffered 
too much. The glory of the kingdom will 
make up for all. 

" Fear not, little flock, it is your Father's 
good pleasure to give you the kingdom." 
Along with " the King of glory," we shall 
take our place upon the throne, in that day 
when, after " raising the poor out of the 
dust, he shall set them among princes, and 
make them to inherit the throne of glory ; " 
when " tho wicked shall be silent in dark- 
ness, and the adversaries of the Lord shall 



168 THE KINGDOM. 

be broken in pieces ; " when " the Lord 
shall judge the ends of the earth, giving 
strength unto his king, and exalting the 
horn of his anointed." (1 Sam. ii. 8 — 10.) 

" Thy kingdom come ! " This is the bur- 
den of our cries. Weary of man's rule, we 
long for God's. Sick at heart with this 
world's scenes of evil,— man spoiling man ; 
man enslaving man ; man wounding man ; 
man defrauding man ; man treading upon 
man ; — we long for the setting up of the 
righteous throne. Oh, what a world will 
this be, when man's will as well as man's 
rule shall be exchanged for Christ's rule 
and will ; when God's " will shall be done 
on earth even as it is done in heaven " ! 

It is our joy to think that this kingdom 
is near ; and that there are no centuries of 
sin and wrong still in reserve either for the 
church or for the earth. Its nearness is our 
consolation. The hope that it will come 
cheers us ; but the thought that it is com- 
ing soon cheers us more. For both faith 



THE KINGDOM. 1(59 

and hope are fed by the thought of nearness. 

We do not fret at delay, nor grow faint and 

disconsolate. Yet in some respects our 

feelings are not unlike those thus described 

by one of other days, 

... So tedious is this day, 
As is the night before some festival 
To an impatient child that hath new robes, 
And may not wear them, . . . 

Our bridal robes are ready, and we long to 
put them on. Our priestly-royal raiment 
is also ready, and we desire to exchange 
for it these weeds of poverty, and shame, 
and widowhood. Yet " in patience we 
possess our souls." 

We are on the daily out-look for a king- 
dom, lifting up our heads knowing that our 
redemption draweth nigh. It will not tarry. 
The signs of its approach are multiplying. 
The shadows are still passing and repassing 
along the grey cliffs, but their increasing 
rapidity of movement shows a momentous 
change at hand. Kingdoms are still rising 
as well as falling, but the deep force of the 



170 THE KINGDOM. 

vibrations — the brevity as well as the 
abruptness of oscillation — betoken a crisis. 
At this crisis the world's movements are 
brought to a stand. Then, touched by a 
Divine hand, they recommence. A better 
order of rule begins* Satan has been 
bound. (Rev. xx. 1 — 8.) " The oppressor 
has ceased." (Isa. xiv. 4.) He who " smote 
the people in wrath" is smitten. (Isa. xiv. 
6.) The misgoverned world rejoices. " The 
whole earth is at rest and is quiet ; they 
that dwell in it break forth into singing." 
(Isa. xiv. 7.) The anointed King has ap- 
peared. The great kingdom has come I 

* Ultima Cumaei venit jam carminis aetas, 
Magnus ab integro sseclorum nascitur ordo 
Aspice venture* laetentur at omnia saeclo. 



CHAPTER XL 



THE GRACE. 



Our fountain-head of blessing here is 
grace. It was to this grace or free love 
of God that we came when first the con- 
sciousness of want and sin awoke within 
us. This grace of God we found to be 
large enough for us, and altogether suit- 
able ; so that while we felt ourselves unfit 
objects for any thing else, we were just the 
more, on that account, fit objects for grace. 
Either for wrath or for grace we were fit, 
but for nothing else — for nothing between. 
We shrank from the wrath, and we took 
refuge in the grace. Between the one and 
the other, the blood of the accepted sacri- 
fice had made a way, " a way of holiness ;" 
q 2 



172 THE GRACE. 

we saw that way, we saw it to be free and 
unchallenged, we fled along that way, and 
soon found ourselves beyond, the reach of 
wrath, under the broad covering of grace, 
nay, under the very wing of the gracious 
One, of him who is " full of grace and 
truth." 

It was the knowledge of this grace that 
rooted up our doubts, that quieted our 
fears, and made us blush for our unbelief 
and suspicious mistrust. It is the know- 
ledge of this grace that still keeps our souls 
in peace, in spite of weakness, and sin, 
and conflict. Being permitted to draw 
upon it without limit and without restric- 
tion, we feel that no circumstances can 
arise, in which we shall not be at liberty 
to use it, nay, in which it is not our chief 
sin to stand aloof from it, as if it had be- 
come less wide and free. With all this 
large grace placed at our disposal, to draw 
upon continually, what folly to be afraid of 
enemies, and evils, and days of trouble ! 



THE GRACE. 173 

For thus saith the prophet, " Blessed is 
the man that trusteth in the Lord, and 
whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be 
as a tree planted by the waters, and that 
spreadeth out her roots by the river, and 
shall not see when heat cometh, but her 
leaf shall be green ; and shall not be care- 
ful in the year of drought, neither shall 
cease from yielding fruit." (Jer. xvii. 7, 8.) 
It is in this grace that we " continue." 
(Acts xiii. 43.) It is in this grace that we 
" stand." (Rom. v. 2.) It is in this grace 
that we are to "be strong." (2 Tim. ii. 1.) 
It is this grace that we are to " holdfast." 
(Heb. xii. 28, margin.) It is this grace 
that is " sufficient for us." (2 Cor. xii. &.) 
It is this grace that we desire for others, 
saying, " The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ 
be with you." (Eph. vi. 24.) All is grace, 
from the beginning to the end, unmingled 
grace, in which no respect is had to aught 
of good done, felt, thought, spoken by us. 
So that the history of our life is wrapt up 
q 3 



174 THE GRACE. 

in these blessed words, u Where sin 
abounded, grace did much more abound." 
(Rom. v. 20.) We have found that the 
new sins of each hour, so far from closing 
the fountain of grace against us, opened 
new springs of grace for us — springs of 
grace which we should never otherwise 
have known, nor thought it possible to 
exist. Not as if sin were less vile on this 
account. David's horrid sins were the 
occasions of opening up new depths of 
grace, unimagined before ; yet his iniquity 
lost none of its hatefuluess thereby. So 
grace is ever gushing forth upon us to 
sweep away each new sin, yet in doing so 
it makes the sin thus swept away to ap- 
pear more hideous and inexcusable. The 
brighter the sun, the darker and sharper 
are the shadows ; so the fuller the grace, 
the viler the sin appears. 

And as our personal history, as saved 
men, is the history of abounding sin met 
by more abounding grace, so is the history 



THE GRACE. 175 

at large of all things in this fallen world. 
What is all Israel's history, every step of 
it, but the history of man's boundless sin 
drawing out the more boundless grace of 
God ? What is the church's history but the 
same, so that each of the chosen and called 
ones who make up its mighty multitude, 
can say with him of old, whose name was 
chief of sinners, " The grace of our Lord 
was exceeding abundant with faith and 
love which is in Christ Jesus." (1 Tim. i. 
14.) And what is even the history of this 
material creation, on which the curse has 
pressed so long and heavily, but the history 
of grace abounding over sin and rescuing 
from the devouring fire this polluted soil ? 

All has been of grace hitherto. And all 
shall be of grace hereafter. In this respect 
there shall be no change. 

Yet this is not the whole truth. For 
the brightest disclosures are yet to come. 
The first coming of the Lord opened up to 
ms heights and depths of most wondrous 



176 THE GRACE. 

grace ; but his second coming is to bring 
with it discoveries of grace as marvellous, 
and as yet unrevealed. That promise, 
s< The Lord will give grace and glory," 
(Psa. lxxxiv. 11,) seems specially to refer 
to the time, when, after days of sad long- 
ing, (verse 2,) and weary journeying 
through the valley of Baca, (ver. 6,) we 
appear in Zion before God, and standing 
with the New Jerusalem we sing the song 
of blessed contrast, " A day in thy courts 
is better than a thousand," as if this new 
outburst of grace, which meets us as we 
enter the gates of pearl, overpassed all that 
we had tasted before. The apostle Peter 
also points forward to the same period foi 
the full display of grace, when he speaks ot 
" the grace that is to be brought unto us* 
at the revelation of Jesus Christ " (1 Petei 
i. 13) ; indicating this to us, that in thaf 
day, new and larger circles of grace shall 
open out, just as the horizon widens when 
the sun ascends. To this same day the 



THE GRACE. 177 

prophet Zechariah points when he says, 
" He shall bring forth the headstone with 
shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it." 
(Zech. iv. 7.) But especially is this truth 
taught us by the apostle Paul when he 
tells us, that God's object in quickening us 
together with Christ, in raising us up to- 
gether and making us sit together in 
heavenly places, is, that " in the ages to 
come* he might show the exceeding 
riches of his grace in his kindness to- 
wards us through Christ Jesus." t Here 
he heaps word upon word, as if he could 
find none strong enough for his purpose ; 

* kv reus ailocri tois kTrzpyofxivoLS, that is, " in the 
ages that are coming npon us." It is the same word as 
is used in those two places in Luke, "looking after 
those things that are coming on the earth," and, " as a 
snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the earth." 
Not as if this were confined to millennial times. These 
are called " the age to come," but these others are 
** the ages to come." 

f Eph. ii. 7. p The word " exceeding " is a very 
strong one, vtrtptaWovTa ttXovtov, and is the same 
word used 2 Cor. iii. 10, "The glory that excelleth ;" 
Epk. i. 19, " The exceeding greatness of his power ; M 
iii. 19, "The love of Christ that passeth knowledge." 



178 THE GRACE. 

it is not merely grace, but it is riches of 
grace; nay, it is not this only, it is exceed- 
ing riches of grace ; riches of grace not 
only excelling all other riches, but excel- 
ling all those riches of grace that have 
hitherto been known, as if past grace were 
to be forgotten in the plenteousness of that 
which is to come. 

How often in Israel's past days, when 
sin abounded, has grace come pouring in, 
obliterating it all as if it had never been ! 
But in the day when " the Redeemer shall 
come to Zion and turn away ungod- 
liness from Jacob," — at the moment when 
their cry of despair may be, " Hath God 
forgotten to be gracious ? " shall grace come 
in upon them like a flood, fuller and richer 
than any thing that they or their fathers 
knew, bearing down mightier obstacles, 
and levelling higher mountains of iniquity. 
For it is written, in reference to this time, 
" Therefore will the Lord wait, that he 
may be gracious to you .... he will be very 



THE GRACE. 179 

gracious to thee at the voice of thy cry." 
(Isa. xxx. 18.) In that day shall " grace " 
not merely bring forgiveness to Israel, but 
raise her to a height of glory in the earth 
and eminence among the nations ; so that 
the past shall not be remembered nor come 
into mind. 

How often in the church's past history 
has grace been magnified ! Each age has 
brought out to view new wonders of grace, 
because of which she has praised the God 
of all grace. But the abundance of the 
past is not all that is in store for her. Her 
returning Lord shall bring with him all 
the " exceeding riches of his grace," and 
upon her shall these riches be expended. 
When caught up into the clouds to meet 
her Lord in the air and to be for ever with 
him, she shall be led into the treasure- 
house of grace and get a glimpse of its 
vastness. Each step in her past course 
has drawn forth a fresh out-flow of abound- 
ing grace. Grace found her in the desert 



180 THE GRACE. 

land and in the waste howling wilderness. 
Grace drew her out of the horrible pit and 
out of the miry clay. Grace washed her, 
and " clothed " her, and " shod " her, and 
"girded " her, and " decked her with orna- 
ments," (Ezek. xvi. 9 — 11,) giving her 
beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourn- 
ing, the garments of praise for the spirit of 
heaviness. Grace strengthened her for 
warfare, and hardship, and labour, making 
her more than conqueror through him that 
loved her. Grace comforted her in the 
evil day, wiped away tears, poured in fresh 
joys, and threw round her the everlasting 
arms. Grace taught her to pray, and 
praise, and love, and trust, and serve, in 
spite of the ever-revolting heart within. 
Grace kept her as a stranger and a pilgrim 
here, without a city and without a resting- 
place on earth, looking for the city of 
foundations, watching for her Lord's ap- 
pearing, amid all the heart-sickenings of 
hope deferred, and wearying for the Bride- 



THE GRACE. 181 

groom's embrace, undazzled and undis- 
tracted by the false splendour of a present 
evil world. But the grace that has brought 
her thus far is not exhausted. For it is 
absolutely boundless > like the heart of Him 
out of whom it comes ; and as it raises the 
church from one level to another, its own 
circle is ever enlarging. 

The resurrection-dawn, the morning of 
joy, brings with it new stores of grace. We 
had thought that grace could go no further 
than it had gone here, in forgiving so many 
sins, in saving us with so complete a salva- 
tion ; but we then shall find that grace 
had only begun to display itself. 

It was but the first draught from the 
deep well that we tasted here. Grace 
meets us as we come up from the tomb to 
load us with new blessings, such as eye 
hath not seen nor ear heard. It clothes 
us with the royal raiment. It seats us 
upon the throne. It gives us the " crown 
of life " (Rev. ii. 10) ; the " crown of right- 



182 THE GRACE. 

eousness." (2 Tim. iv. 8.) It makes us 
pillars in the temple of our God. It writes 
upon us the name of our God, and the 
name of the city of our God. It gives us 
" the morning-star." It gives us the white 
stone, and in the stone a new name written 
which no man knoweth, saving he that 
receiveth it. It makes us to eat of the 
hidden manna. It leads us back to the 
tree of life which is in the midst of the 
paradise of God. It brings us into the 
bridal chamber ; it sets us down at the 
marriage table, teaching us to sing, " Let 
us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to 
him, for the marriage of the Lamb is come, 
and his wife hath made herself ready." It 
carries us into the midst of that city which 
has no need of the sun, neither of the 
moon to shine in it; whose wall is of 
jasper, whose foundations gems, whose 
gates pearls, whose streets translucent 
gold. It gives us to drink of the pure 
river of the water of life, clear as crystal, 



THE GBACE, 183 

proceeding out of the throne of God and 
of the Lamb. 

All these things grace is yet to do for us 
in that morning which is to dawn when 
this night of weeping is at an end. All this 
glory — this exceeding and eternal weight 
of glory — we shall owe to the exceeding 
riches of that grace which is then so mar- 
vellously to unfold itself, heaping honour 
upon honour, and gift upon gift, and joy 
upon joy, without end for ever. 

In this let us mark the difference be- 
tween Christ and his church, the Bride- 
groom and the bride. The same glory in- 
vests both ; but the way of receiving it is 
widely different. To him it is a reward of 
righteousness, to her of grace. Righteous- 
ness crow T ns him, grace crowns her. These 
marvellous honours are in his case the 
claim of righteousness, in hers the mere 
award of grace. Of him it is written, 
" Thou hast loved righteousness and hated 
iniquity, therefore God, even thy God, hath 
b 2 



184 THE GRACE. 

anointed thee with the oil of gladness above 
thy fellows " (Psa. xlv. 7); while of her ife 
is said, " Who hath saved us and called us 
with an holy calling, not according to our 
works, but according to his own purpose 
and grace, given us in Christ Jesus before 
the world began. 9 ' (2 Tim. i. 9.) What 
righteousness does for him, grace does for' 
her. And oh how boundless must that 
grace be, when it can do for her all that 
righteousness can do for him I 

That coming day of grace sheds light 
upon the present, by showing us how vast 
and inexhaustible that grace is which is 
pouring itself oat from the bosom of the 
Father through the blood of the Son. If 
these riches of grace be so exceeding great, 
then how is it possible for us to entertain 
the suspicion that so often haunts us now, 
u Is there grace enough for. the pardon of 
sins like mine, — grace enough to secure 
welcome and acceptance to a sinner like 
me? " What ! is there grace enough to re- 



THE GRACE. 185 

ceive myriads, washing them clean and 
presenting them blameless in the day of 
the Lord with exceeding joy, and is there 
not enough for one ? Is there grace enough 
to pour out such wondrous glory upon the 
multitudes of the undeserving hereafter, 
and is there not enough to bring forgive- 
ness to one undeserving soul just now ? So 
that in thus telling of the grace which the 
ages to come are to unroll, we are proclaim- 
ing good news to the chief of sinners, — 
good news concerning the infinite large- 
ness of grace,— good news concerning Him 
out of whom this blessed stream is flowing. 
Oh, what a rebuke to fear, to doubt, to 
suspicion, to unbelief, is the truth concern- 
ing these exceeding riches of grace yet tc 
be developed ! Is it possible that we can 
go on, fearing, doubting, suspecting, mis- 
believing, with the assured knowledge that 
grace is so free and large, so sufficient to 
embrace the whole circumstances of our 
case, so suitable to each special want, each 
E 3 



186 THE GRACE. 

special burden, each special sin ? Shall we 
dare to make more of the sin than of the 
grace, of the want than of the supply, of 
the burden than of the relief? Shall we 
not be ashamed to magnify our sin beyond 
the grace of God, and to reason as if the 
grace that can confer on us the kingdom 
and the crown of Christ were not large 
enough in compass to cover our sins ? Oh 
the folly of unbelief! — folly without a 
name and without an equal, to believe in a 
grace willing to place us on the throne of 
the universe by the side of the everlasting 
Son, yet not willing to pardon us, — a grace 
large enough to say, " Come, ye blessed of 
my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared 
for you before the foundation of the world," 
yet not large enough to say, " Be of good 
cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee ! " 

" It doth not indeed yet appear what we 
shall be." Yet, as the womb of grace knows 
no abortions, we know " that he who has 
begun the good work in us will perform it 



THE GRACE. 187 

until the day of Jesus Christ." The grace 
has not had full room to expand itself and 
show all the vastness of its compass. Our 
life is hid ; our glory is hid ; our inherit- 
ance is hid ; our city has not yet come 
down out of heaven from God. In the pit 
of Dothan it did not appear what Joseph 
was to be. His strange dreams did betoken 
something, yet who could have thought 
that he was to sit upon Pharaoh's throne ? 
It did not appear what Ruth was to be 
when she lived in Moab, a stranger to the 
true God, or even when she left home and 
kindred to cast in her lot with Israel. That 
blessed scene of love and faith when " Or- 
pah kissed" and "Ruth clave," giving 
forth a heart of no common mould, did in- 
timate something, but who could have 
thought that she was to be a mother in 
Israel, from whom Messiah was to spring ? 
So we do not now wear the aspect of 
that which we shall be. We do not look 
like kings. And though at times, whe 



188 THE GKACE. 

we get a glimpse of the promised crown, 
and when a vision of its nearness passes 
before us, our face flushes, our eye kindles, 
our gait unconsciously assumes unusual 
dignity, yet in general we look very unlike 
that which we shall be. Sometimes the 
star of nobility— the badge of our order — 
flashes out from the sordid covering and 
glitters on our breast, yet this is seldom; 
more seldom now in these last days than 
formerly. For religion, even the best, has 
sunk down from its primitive loftiness into 
a tame, second-rate, inferior thing, and the 
still-clinging garments of the old man cover 
in or quench every rising ray of anticipated 
glory. 

What different beings grace would make 
us would we but allow it! Yet, instead of 
allowing it, we put it from us, content with 
just as much of it as will save us from the 
wrath to come. We shrink from its fulness, 
as if we should thereby stand committed 
to a far holier walk and higher style of 



THE GRACE. 189 

living than we are prepared for. For " the 
grace of God that bringeth salvation teach- 
eth us to deny ungodliness and worldly- 
lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and 
godly in this present world, looking for 
that blessed hope, even the glorious ap- 
pearing of the great God, and our Saviour 
Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us that 
he might redeem us from all iniquity, and 
purify unto himself a peculiar people 
zealous of good works." 

The grace that flowed in upon us dur- 
ing our long night has been large and 
manifold ; but it is not ended with the 
night. The morning brings with it new 
stores of grace. When that grace unfolds 
itself, then shall it appear what we really 
are. Our present guise will fall from us, 
we shall stand forth as " heirs of God," and 
he who hath given us grace shall also give 
as glory; he who led us through the 
night shall bring us forth to the joy of the 
morning. 



CHAPTER XIL 

THE GLORY. 

Not only a man's true life, but a man's 
true history begins with his conversion. 
Up till that time, he is a being without a 
history. He has no story to tell. He is 
but part of a world lying in wickedness, 
having nothing about him worthy of a 
record. 

But from the moment that he is born 
again, and thus taken out of the mass, he 
receives a personality as well as a dignity 
which fit him for having a history, — a his- 
tory which God can own as such, and 
which God himself will record. From 
that time he has a story to tell, wondrous 
and divine, such as angels listen to, and 
over which there is joy in heaven. 



THE GLORY. 191 

In that broad ocean, there are millions 
of drops ; yet they are one mingled mass 
of fluid; no one of them has a history* 
There may be a history of the ocean, but 
not of its individual drops* But, see, yon 
drop is beginning to part from the mass, 
It takes hold of a sun-beam and rises into 
the firmament. There it gleams in the 
rainbow or brightens in the hues of sun-set. 
It has now a history. From the moment 
that it came out of the mass and obtained 
a personality, it had a story to tell, a story 
of its own, a story of splendour and beauty* 

In those vast blocks of unquarried rock 
what various forms are lying concealed ! 
what shapes of statuary or architecture 
are there ! Yet they have no history. They 
can have none. They are but parts of a 
hideous block, in which not one line or 
curve of beauty is visible. But the noise 
of hammers is heard. Man lifts up his 
tool. A single block is severed. Again 
lie lifts up his tool, and it begins to assume 



192 THE GLORY. 

a form ; till, as stroke after stroke falls on 
it, and touch after touch smooths and 
shapes it, the perfect image of the human 
form is seen, and it seems as if the hand of 
the artist had only been employed in un- 
wrapping the stony folds from that fair 
form, and awakening it from the slumber 
of its marble tomb. From the moment 
that the chisel touched that piece of rock 
its history began. 

Such is the case of a saint. From the 
moment that the hand of the Spirit is laid 
on him to begin the process of separation, 
from that moment his history begins. He 
then receives a conscious, outstanding 
personality, that fits him for having a his- 
tory — a history entirely marvellous ; a 
history whose pages are both written and 
read in heaven ; a history which in its 
divine brightness spreads over eternity. 
His true dignity now commences. He is 
fit to take a place in story. Each event in 
his life becomes worthy of a record. " The 



THE GLORY. 193 

righteous shall be in everlasting remem- 
brance." 

On earth this history is one of suffering 
and dishonour, even as was that of the 
Master ; but hereafter, in the kingdom, it 
is one of glory and honour. "All the 
time/ 5 says Howe, " from the soul's first 
conversion God has been at work upon it, 
labouring, shaping it, polishing it, spread- 
ing his own glory on it, inlaying, enamel- 
ling it with glory ; now at last the whole 
work is revealed, the curtain is drawn 
aside, and the blessed soul awakes." Then 
a new epoch in its history begins. 

What that history is to be, we know not 
now. That it will be wondrous, we know ; 
how wondrous we cannot conceive. That 
it will be very unlike our present one, we 
know ; yet still not severed from it, but 
linked to it, nay, springing out of it as its 
root or seed. Our present life is the 
under-ground state of the plant ; our future 
life, the shooting, and blossoming, and fruit- 



194 THE GiORY. 

bearing ; but the plant is the same, and 
the future depends for all its excellency 
and beauty upon the present. Night is 
not the shutting up of day, but day is the 
opening out of night. Day is but the 
night in blossom,-^the expanded petals of 
some dark, unsightly bud, containing with- 
in it glories of which no glimpses have 
yet reached us here. It is moody senti- 
ment, as well as false philosophy, to say as 
one in our day has done, " Night is nobler 
than day ; day is but a motley-coloured 
Veil, spread transiently over the inftiiite 
bosom of night, hiding from us» its purely 
transparent, eternal deeps." Night is at 
best but the beauty of death ; day, of life. 
And it is life, not death, that is beautiful. 
And if life on earth, in all its various forms 
and unfoldings, be so very beautiful, what 
will it not be hereafter, when it unfolds it- 
self to the full, transfused throughout all 
being, with an intensity now unknown, as 
if almost becoming visible by means of 



THE GLORY. 195 

the new glory which it then shall spread 
over all creation. 

" The wise shall inherit glory." (Prov. 
in. 35.) " The saints shall be joyful in 
glory." (Psa. cxlix. 5.) They are " ves- 
sels of mercy, afore prepared unto glory." 
(Rom. ix. 23.) That to which we are 
called is " eternal glory." (1 Pet. v. 10.) 
That which we obtain is " salvation in 
Christ Jesus with eternal glory." (2 Tim. 
ii. 10.) It is to glory that God is "bring- 
ing many sons " (Heb. ii. 10) ; so that as 
he, through whom we are brought to 
it, is (t crowned with glory and honour," 
so shall we be. (Heb. ii. 9.) We are 
" to rejoice with joy unspeakable and 
full of glory." (1 Pet. i. 8.) We are not 
only " witnesses of the sufferings of Christ, 
but partakers of the glory that shall be re- 
vealed." (1 Pet. v. I.) So that the word 
of exhortation runs thus : " Rejoice, inas- 
much as ye are partakers of Christ's suf- 
ferings ; that, when his glory shall be 
s 2 



196 THE GLORY. 

revealed, ye may be glad also with exceed- 
ing joy." (1 Pet. iii. 13.) And the promise 
is not only, u if we suffer we shall also reign 
with him ; " but, " if we suffer with him 
we shall be also glorified together." (Rom. 
viii. 17.) 

This glory, then, is our portion. It is 
the " better thing " that God has provided 
for us, and because of which he is not 
ashamed to be called our God. This is 
the glory that throws all present suffering 
into the shade, making it to be eternally 
forgotten. 

Glory is the concentrated essence of all 
that is holy, excellent, and beautiful.* 

* " Glory, in the proper notion of it, is nothing else 
but resplendent excellency, the lustre of excellency, or 
real worth made conspicuous. Yet as there is an ex- 
cellency conceivable in the nature of it, that excellency 
whereof it is the splendour and brightness ; so we must 
conceive a peculiar excellency of that very radiation, 
that splendour itself, wherewith it shines into blessed 
souls. In its very nature it is the brightness of Divine 
excellencies; in its present appearance (that is, in 
heaven) it shines in the highest excellency of that 
brightness. In its nature it excelleth ail things else; 



THE GLORY. 197 

For all being has its more and its less per- 
fect parts. And its glory is that which is 
most perfect about it, to which of course 
that which is less perfect has, according to 
its measure, contributed. Light is the glory 
of the sun. Transparency is the glory of 
the stream. The flower is the glory of the 
plant. The soul is the glory of the man. 
The face is the glory of the body. And this 
glory is strangely manifold : " There is one 
glory of the sun, and another glory of the 
moon, and another glory of the stars, for 
star differeth from star in glory." 

What is really glorious is so hidden, so 
blighted, so intermixed with deformity and 
corruption here, that Scripture always 
speaks as if the whole glory were yet in re- 



in its present exhibition, compared with all its former 
radiations, it excelleth itself. . . Glory is then to shine 
in its noon-day strength and vigour. 'Tis then in its 
meridian. Here the riches of glory are to be displayed, 
certain treasures of glory, the plenitude and magni- 
ficence of glory. '* — Howe's Blessedness of the Right* 
ecus. 

s 3 



198 THE GLORY. 

serve, — none of it ye t revealed. So that when 
He came to earth who was " the brightness 
of Jehovah's glory/' he was not recognised 
as the possessor of such glory; it was hid- 
den ; it shone not. Few eyes saw any glory 
at all in him ; none saw the extent or great- 
ness of it. Even in his case it did not ap- 
pear what he was and what he shall be, 
when he comes " to be glorified in his 
saints." * 

All that is glorious, whether visible or 
invisible, material or immaterial, natural 
or spiritual, must have its birth-place in 
God. " Of him, and through him, and to 
him are all things, to whom be glory for 
ever." (Rom. xi. 86.) All glorious things 
come forth out of him, and have their seeds, 
or germs, or patterns in himself. We say 

* That which the world calls glory Scripture casts 
scorn upon, as " a vain show," — "lighter than vanity," 
mere emptiness ; while its name for glory is weight or 
solidity, tos: — to which the apostle seems to refer 
when he speaks of the "weight of glory." 2 Cor. 
iv. 17. 



THE GLORY. 199 

of that flower, t€ how beautiful ; " but the 
type of its beauty, — the beauty of which it 
is the faint expression, is in God. We say 
of that star, " how bright ;" but the bright- 
ness which it represents or declares, is in 
God. So of every object above and beneath. 
And so especially shall it be seen in the 
objects of glory which shall surround us in 
the kingdom of God. Of each thing there, 
as of the city itself, it shall be said, u it 
has the glory of God." (Rev. xxi. 11.) 

Glory, then, is our inheritance. The best, 
the richest, the brightest, the most beau- 
tiful of all that is in God, of good, and rich, 
and bright, and beautiful, shall be ours. 
The glory that fills heaven above, the glory 
that spreads over the earth beneath, shall 
be ours. But while " the glory of the ter- 
restrial " shall be ours, yet in a truer sense 
" the glory of the celestial shall be ours." 
Already by faith we have taken our place 
amid things celestial, " being quickened 
together with Christ, and raised up with 



200 THE GLORY. 

him, and made to sit with him in heavenly 
places." (Eph. ii. 6.) Thus we have already 
claimed the celestial as our own; and having 
risen with Christ, we " set our affection 
upon things above, not on things on the 
earth" (Col. iii. 2.) Far-ranging dominion 
shall be ours ; with all varying shades and 
kinds of glory shall we be encompassed, 
circle beyond circle stretching over the 
universe ; but it is the celestial glory that 
is so truly ours, as the redeemed and the 
risen; and in the midst of that celestial 
glory shall be the family mansion, the 
church's dwelling-place and palace, — our 
true home for eternity. 

All that awaits us is glorious. There is an 
inheritance in reversion ; and it is " an in- 
heritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and 
that fadeth not away." (1 Pet. i. 4.) There 
is a rest, a sabbath-keeping in store for us 
(Heb. iv. 9) ; and this " rest shall be glo- 
rious." (Isa. xi. 10.) The kingdom which 
we claim is a glorious kingdom. The crown, 



THE GLORY. 201 

which we are to wear is a glorious crown. 
The city of our habitation is a glorious 
city. The garments which shall clothe us 
are garments " for glory and for beauty." 
Our bodies shall be glorious bodies, fashion- 
ed after the likeness of Christ's " glorious 
body." (Phil. iii. 21.) Our society shall be 
that of the glorified. Our songs shall be 
songs of glory. And of the region which 
we are to inhabit it is said, that fe the glory 
of God doth lighten it, and the Lamb is 
the light thereof." (Rev. xxi. 23.) 

The hope of this glory cheers us. From 
under a canopy of night we look out upon 
these promised scenes of blessedness, and 
we are comforted. Our dark thoughts are 
softened down, even when they are not 
wholly brightened. For day is near, and 
joy is near, and the warfare is ending, and 
the tear shall be dried up, and the shame 
be lost in the glory, and "we shall be pre- 
sented faultless before the presence of his 
glory with exceeding joy." 



202 THE GLOET. 

Then the fruit of patience and of faith 
shall appear, and the hope we have so long 
been clinging to shall not put us to shame. 
Then shall we triumph and praise. Then 
shall we be avenged on death, and pain, and 
sickness. Then shall every wound be more 
than healed. Egypt enslaves us no more. 
Babylon leads us captive no more. The 
Red Sea is crossed, the wilderness is passed, 
Jordan lies behind us, and we are in Jeru- 
salem ! There is no more curse — there is no 
more night. The tabernacle of God is with 
us ; in that tabernacle he dwells, and we 
dwell with him. 

It is " the God of all grace " who u has 
called us to his eternal glory by Christ 
Jesus." It is " when the chief Shepherd 
shall appear, that we shall receive the 
crown of glory that fadeth not away." (1 
Pet. v. 4, 10.) And this " after we have 
suffered a while," and by suffering have 
been " made perfect, stablished, strength- 
ened, settled." So that suffering is not lost 



THE GLORY. 203 

upon us. It prepares us for the glory. And 
the hope of that glory, as well as the know- 
ledge of the discipline through which we are 
passing, and of the process of preparation 
going on in us. sustains us, nay, teaches us 
to " glory in tribulation." This is comfort, 
nay, it is happiness. Strange in the world's 
eye, but not strange in ours ! All that the 
world has is but a poor imitation of hap* 
pir.ess a:;d consolation : ours is real, even 
now ; how much more hereafter ! Nor will 
a brief delay and a sore conflict lessen the 
weight of coming glory. Nay, they will 
add to it ; and it is worth waiting for, it is 
worth suffering for, it is worth fighting for. 
It is so sure of coming, and so blessed when 
it comes. 

" The mass of glory, 55 says Howe, " is yet 
in reserve; we are not yet so»high as the 
highest heavens." All this is hanging over 
us, — inviting us on, stirring us up, loosening 
us from things present, so that the pain of 
loss, or sickness, or bereavement, falls more 



204 THE GLORY. 

gently on us, and tends but to make us 
less vain and light, — more thoroughly in 
earnest. 

" That they may behold my glory/' the 
Lord pleaded for his own. This is the sum 
of all. Other glories there will be, as we 
have seen ; but this is the sum of all. It is 
the very utmost that even " the Lord of 
glory " could ask for them. Having sought 
this he could seek no more ; he could go 
no further. And our response to this is, 
u Let me see thy glory ; " yes, and the glad 
confidence in which we rest is this, " As 
for me, I will behold thy face in righteous- 
ness; I shall be satisfied when I awake 
with thy likeness." This is our ambition. 
Divine and blessed ambition, in which 
there is no pride, no presumption, and no 
excess ! Nothing less can satisfy than the 
directest, fullest vision of incarnate glory. 
Self-emptied before the Infinite Majesty, 
and conscious of being wholly unworthy 
even of a servant's place, we yet feel as if 



THE GLORY. 205 

drawn irresistibly into the innermost circle 
and centre, satisfied with nothing less than 
the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. 

" The glory which thou gavest me I 
have given them." (John xvii. 22.) No less 
than this, both in kind and amount, is the 
glory in reserve, according to the promise 
of the Lord. The glory given to him he 
makes over to them ! They s€ are made 
partakers of Christ," and all that he has is 
theirs. Nay, and he says, " I have given ;" 
as if it were already theirs by his gift, just 
as truly as it was his by the Father's gift. 
He receives it from the Father only for the 
purpose of immediately handing it over to 
them! So that even here they can say, 
" This glory is already mine, and I must 
live as one to whom such infinite glory be- 
longs." " Beholding, as in a glass, this glory 
of the Lord, they are changed into the same 
image from glory to glory." (2 Cor. iii. 18.) 
To fret or despond is sad inconsistency in 
one who can say, even under sorest pressures, 



206 THE GLORY. 

" I reckon that the sufferings of this pre- 
sent time are not worthy to he compared 
with the glory that shall be revealed in us." 
Look at them by themselves, and they do 
seem at times most overwhelming ; place 
them side by side with the eternal glory, 
and they disappear. 

" The riches of his glory," says the apos- 
tle in one place (Rom. ix. 23) ; " the riches 
of the glory of his inheritance in the saints," 
writes he in another. (Eph. i. 18.) Strange 
expressions these ! They carry us up to a 
height of such infinite glory and joy, that 
we feel bewildered and overwhelmed. Just 
as there are " riches of grace," and " riches 
of mercy, "and " riches of love," and "riches 
of wisdom, 5 ' so there are " riches of glory ;" 
glory in abundance, — such as shall make 
us rich indeed ; glory spread over our whole 
inheritance, so that we shall " have all and 
abound." Nay, this glory is that which 
God counts his riches, that which he 
reckons the perfection of his inheritance, — 



THE GLORY. 207 

the very essence of its beauty and its bless- 
edness. 

" The liberty of the glory of the children 
of God/ 5 writes the apostle, (Kom.viii.21,) 
— thereby telling us that there is a glory 
which is the peculiar property of the saints, 
— a glory of which they can say, it is our 
own, thereby marking it out from the glory 
of all other creatures. This glory contains 
liberty. It sets free those who possess it. 
Corruption had brought with it chains and 
bondage; glory brings with it divine liberty! 
It is not the liberty that brings the glory; it 
is the glory that brings the liberty. Blessed 
liberty ! Freedom from every bondage ! Not 
only the bondage of corruption and sin and 
death, but the bondage of sorrow ! For is 
not sorrow a bondage ? Are not its chains 
sharp and heavy ? From this bondage of 
tribulation the glory sets us eternally free. 
It is the last fetter, save that of the grave, 
that is struck from our bruised limbs, but 
when it is broken, it is broken for ever ! 
t 2 



208 THE GLORY. 

And this liberty which the glory brings 
to us is one which shall extend to the un- 
conscious creation around us. We brought 
that creation into bondage, covering it 
with dishonour, and making it the prey of 
corruption. It now groans and travails 
under this sore bondage. But as it has 
shared our bondage, it is also to share our 
liberty ; and that same glory which brings 
liberty to us shall introduce the oppressed 
and dishonoured creation into the same 
blessed freedom ! O longed-for consumma- 
tion ! O joyful hope ! O welcome day, 
when the Bringer of this glory shall arrive, 
and the voice be heard from heaven, " Be- 
hold, I make all things new." 

Nor is it liberty only which this glory 
contains in it, but power also, as it is writ- 
ten, " strengthened with all might according 
to the power of his glory." (Col. i. 11.) 
This glory has, even now, a power-giving 
energy, whereby we are strengthened " to 
all patience and long-suffering with joyful- 



THE GLORY. 209 

ness." Thus "rejoicing in hope of the 
glory of God," (Rom. v. 2,) we are fitted 
for all manner of tribulation and endurance. 
Though still among the things " not seen," 
it not only flings forward a radiance which 
brightens our path, but sheds down a 
strength which enables us to "run with 
patience the race that is set before us." 
And so, in an unholy world, we " walk 
worthy of Him who hath called us unto his 
kingdom and glory/ 9 (1 Thess. ii. 12,) hav- 
ing that prayer fulfilled in us, "The God of 
all grace, who hath called us unto his eter- 
nal glory by Jesus Christ, after that ye 
have suffered a while, make you perfect, 
stablish, strengthen, settle you." (1 Pet. 
v. 10.) 

" Christ in you the hope of glory." An 
indwelling Christ is our earnest, our pledge, 
our hope of glory. Having him, we have 
all that is his, whether present or to 
come. He is the link that binds together 
the here and the hereafter. We died with 



210 THE GLORY. 

him, we went down into the tomb with 
him, we rose with him, and our life is now 
hid with him in God ; but "when he who 
is our life shall appear, then shall we also 
appear with him in glory." (Col. iii. 4.) 

The joy with which we rejoice is a joy 
" unspeakable and full of glory," or more 
literally, a " glorified joy;" a joy such 
as Paul had when caught up into paradise; 
a joy such as John's when placed in vision 
within sight of the celestial city ; a joy 
into whose very essence the thoughts of 
glory enter ; a joy which makes the soul 
which possesses it feel as if it were already 
compassed about with glory, as if it had 
"come to Mount Zion, to the city of the 
living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an 
innumerable company of angels, to the 
general assembly and church of the first- 
born which are written in heaven." (Heb. 
xii. 22.) 

"The glorious gospel of Christ," says 
the apostle (2 Cor. iv. 4) ; and again, " the 



THE GLORY. 211 

glorious gospel of the blessed God/'* (1 
Tim. i. 11); or, more literally, " the gos- 
pel of the glory of Christ," that is, "the 
good news about the glory of Christ," 
and " the good news about the glory of the 
blessed God." As it is <( the gospel of the 
kingdom," or good news about " the king- 
dom," that is preached, so it is good news 
about " the glory." These good news God 
has sent, and is still sending to this world. 
In believing them, and receiving God's re- 
cord concerning the glory, we become par- 
takers of it, and continue to be so, " if we 
hold the beginning of our confidence sted- 
fast unto the end." These good news most 
fully meet our case, however sad or sinful, 
and shed light into our souls even in their 
darkest and most desponding hours. 

Our present " light affliction, which is 
but for a moment, worketh for us a far 
more exceeding and eternal weight of 
glory." So that glory is not merely the 
issue of the tribulation, but in some sense 



212 THE GLORY. 

its product. Tribulation is the soil, and 
glory is the blossom and the fruit. The 
soil is rough and unseemly, but the pro- 
duce is altogether perfect. It may seem 
strange that out of such a field there 
should spring verdure so fresh and fruit so 
divine. Yet we know that such is the 
case. How much we owe to that unlikely 
soil ! Not only do all things work together 
for good to us, but they as truly work to- 
gether for glory. 

Faith lays hold of this and prizes tribu- 
lation, nay, glories in it ; so realizing the 
joy as to. lose sight of the sorrow, save as 
contributing to the joy ; so absorbed in the 
glory as to forget the shame, excepting in 
so far as it is the parent and precursor of 
the glory. 

Most needful is it that we should realize 
these prospects, these glimpses which God 
has given us of what we are yet to be. It 
is not merely lawful to do so for the relief 
of the laden spirit, but it is most vitally 



THE GLORY. 213 

important to do so for the health of our 
soul, for our growth in grace, and for en- 
abling us to press on with cheerful energy 
in the path of service towards God and 
usefulness to our brother saints or fel- 
low men. 

The man of sorrows had joy set before 
him. And it was for this that he endured the 
cross, despising the shame. (Heb. xii. 2.) 
He needed it, and so do we ; for He who 
sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are 
all of one. He found in it strength for the 
bearing of the cross and the endurance of 
the shame. So may we, for as the path he 
trod is the same that is given us to tread 
in, so the strength is to be found where our 
forerunner found it. There is joy in store 
for us, even as for him ; joy not only like 
his own, but his own very joy. (John xv, 
11.) This makes us willing to bear the 
cross in all its weight and sharpness ; nay, 
it lightens it so that ofttimes we do not feel 
its pressure. We can glory both in the 



214 THE GLORY. 

cross and the shame. We hare less of 
these than he had, and we have all his 
consolation, all his joy to the full. 

When this is lost sight of, selfish melan- 
choly often fastens on us. We brood 
over our griefs till they engross us en- 
tirely, to the shutting out of all else. We 
magnify them ; we spread them out and 
turn them over on every side in order to 
find out the gloomiest. We take credit to 
ourselves for endurance, and thus feed our 
pride and self-importance. We fret under 
them, and at the same time grow vain at 
being the objects of so much sympathy — at 
having so many eyes upon us, and so many 
words of comfort addressed to us. 

Nothing can be more unhealthy than 
this state of soul, nor more unlike that in 
which God expects a saint to be. It shuts 
us into the narrow circle of self. It con- 
tracts as well as distorts our vision. It 
vitiates our spiritual tastes, it lowers our 
spiritual tone, it withers and shrivels up 



THE GLORY. 215 

our spiritual being*, unfitting us for all 
offices of calm and gentle love, nay, hinder- 
ing the right d ; charge of plain and com- 
mon duty. I. is in itself a sore disease, 
and is the source of other diseases without 
number. 

To meet this unhealthy tendency God 
seeks to draw us out of ourselves. He does 
so in holding up the cross for us to look 
upon and be healed : but he also does this 
by exhibiting the crown and throne. The 
cross does not annihilate man's natural 
concern for self, but it loosens our thoughts 
from this, by showing us, upon the cross, 
One to whose care we may safely intrust 
self with all its interests, and in w T hose 
pierced hands it will be far better provided 
for than in our own. So the vision of the 
glory does not make away with self, but it 
absorbs it, and elevates it, by revealing the 
kingdom in which God has made such 
blessed and enduring provision for us, as to 
make it appear worse than folly in us to 



216 THE GLORT. 

brood over our case, and make self the ob- 
ject of our sad and anxious care. If we are 
to have glory as surely and as cheaply as 
the lilies have their clothing, or the ravens 
their food, why be so solicitous about self? 
Or why think about self at all, save to re- 
member and to rejoice that God has taken 
all our concerns into his own keeping for 
eternity ? 

Thus God beguiles us away from our 
griefs by giving us something else to muse 
over, — something more worthy of oui 
thoughts. He allures us from the present, 
where all is dark and uncomely, into the 
future, where all is bright and fair. He 
takes us by the hand and leads us, as a 
father his child, out from the gloomy region 
which we are sadly pacing, with our eye 
upon the ground, bent only upon nourishing 
our sorrows, into fields where all is fresh 
and Eden-like ; so that, ere we are aware, 
joy, or at least the faint reflection of it, has 
stolen into our hearts, and lifted up our 



THE GLORX. 217 

heavy eyes. He would not have us abiding 
always in the church-yard, or sitting upon 
the turf beneath which love is buried,— as if 
the tomb to which we are clinging were our 
hope, not resurrection beyond it ; — he would 
have us to come forth ; and having allured 
us away from that scene of death, he bids 
us look upwards, upbraiding us with our 
unbelief and folly, and saying to us, — ■" They 
whom you love are yonder ; ere long He 
who is their life and yours shall appear, 
and you shall rejoin each other, each of you 
embracing, not a weeping, sickly fellow 
mortal, but a glorified saint, set free from 
pain and sin." 

There is nothing more healthy and ge- 
nial for the soul than these anticipations 
of the morning, and of morning-glory. 
They are not visionary, save in the sense in 
which faith is " the substance of things 
hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." 
They transfuse the life of heaven through 
our frame, either, on the one hand, making 



218 THE GLORY. 

our languid pulse to beat more swiftly, or, 
on the other, our feverish pulse to throb 
more calmly and evenly. They act as re- 
gulators of the sottl in its wild and incon- 
stant movements, neither allowing us to 
sink too low nor to soar too high. They 
tend to steady our extreme impulses by 
acting as a counterpoise to the weight of 
grief which so crushes us with its pres- 
sure. 

They withdraw us from self and self- 
broodings, they widen the circle of our 
sympathies, and throw back into the dis- 
tance the fence of exclusivenes*s, which, in 
times of suffering, we are apt to throw up 
around ourselves. They check mere sen- 
timentality, and forbid us to indulge the 
flow of grief for its own luxury. They pro- 
hibit morbid gloom, which loves to shut 
out society, and chooses loneliness. They 
fill us with energy for facing the toils, and 
with ready courage for braving the dangers 
of the night: They animate us with the 



THE GLORY. 219 

?alm but indomitable confidence of hope, 
— a hope which expands and brightens as 
its object approaches. 

The morning ! That is our watchword. 
Our matin and even-song are full of it. It 
gives the hue to life, — imparting colour 
to that which is colourless, and freshening 
that which is faded. It is the sum and 
term of our hopes. Nothing else will do 
for us or for our world, — a world over which 
the darkness^ gathers thicker as the years 
run out. Stars may help to make the sky 
less gloomy; but they are not the sun. 
And besides, clouds have now wrapped 
them so that they are no longer visible. 
The firmament is almost without a star. 
Torches and beacon-lights avail not. They 
make no impression upon the darkness ; it 
is so deep, so real, so palpable. We might 
give up all for lost, were we not assured 
that there is a sun, and that it is hastening 
to rise. 

The church's pilgrimage is nearly done, 



220 THE GLORY. 

Yet she is not less a pilgrim as its end 
draws nigh. Nay, more so. The last stage 
of the journey is the dreariest for her. Her 
path lies through the thickest darkness that 
the world has yet felt. It seems as if it 
were only by the fitful blaze of conflagra- 
tions that we can now shape our way. It 
is the sound of falling kingdoms that is 
guiding us onward. It is the fragments of 
broken thrones lying across our path that 
assures us that our route is the true one, 
and that its end is near, — that end, the 
morning with its songs ; and in that morn- 
ing, a kingdom ; and in that kingdom, 
glory ; and in that glory, the everlasting 
rest, the sabbath of eternity. 



THE END. 



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